IAPE Evidence Blog

The Day­tona Beach News-Journal, news-journalonline.com
BYLINE: LYDA LONGA, Staff writer, lyda.longa@news-jrnl.com

Ormond Beach, FL

Corey Fontana

For more than two decades, Ormond Beach police’s evi­dence unit was fraught with so many prob­lems — includ­ing “fla­grant” mis­man­age­ment and thefts of cash and drugs — that Chief Henry Osterkamp called for a state investigation.

The prob­lems of dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion and pol­icy vio­la­tions were so sig­nif­i­cant in the unit that it was cited as one of the rea­sons the Police Depart­ment failed in its recent bid at re-accreditation, Osterkamp said. The other rea­son was the theft of cash and heroin from the evi­dence room by an employee of a con­tracted clean­ing crew that ser­viced police head­quar­ters and City Hall, a report shows.

A 29-page report released by Ormond Beach police this week paints a pic­ture of gross mis­con­duct by for­mer evi­dence tech­ni­cian Michael Haller, to the point where crim­i­nal behav­ior was sus­pected. Inves­ti­ga­tors found a large manila enve­lope filled with cash that they say Haller stashed in the ceil­ing of the evi­dence room, accord­ing to the report.

In addi­tion, police also found a large box in a smaller room where Haller often worked that con­tained sev­eral envelopes with money in them, total­ing $3,700, the report shows.

The for­mer tech­ni­cian — who resigned in August 2010 amid the inves­ti­ga­tion of his 22-year stint in the evi­dence unit — tried to blame the secreted $3,700 on for­mer evi­dence room vol­un­teer Sam East­er­brook, Osterkamp said Tuesday.

The story of the unaccounted-for money, which police don’t believe, was detailed in a note left behind by Haller: “Found this in Sam’s desk when he left, knew he had some money, did not know it was this. Did not know how to tell you.”

As a result of the audit and inven­tory of the evi­dence room that started in Feb­ru­ary 2010, inves­ti­ga­tors found items of evi­dence that had never been processed.

“The obvi­ous impli­ca­tions of this sit­u­a­tion are that cases could have gone unsolved and remain so to this day because a sim­ple pro­ce­dure was not con­ducted that pos­si­bly could have helped impli­cate a sus­pect and per­haps solved a crim­i­nal case,” Lt. Kenny Hayes, in charge of the department’s sup­port ser­vices divi­sion, wrote in the report.

Inves­ti­ga­tors found stock­piled evi­dence from cases going as far back as the 1970s. The evi­dence included drugs, guns and bio­haz­ardous mate­ri­als, the report shows.

On March 1, 2010, more than 5 tons — or 11,320 pounds — of drugs, guns and unclaimed prop­erty that should have been purged from the room years before, was hauled to an incin­er­a­tor in Tavares for destruc­tion, the report shows.

Also, more than $63,000 in cash was removed from the evi­dence room. That included $13,856 returned to banks — the money was recov­ered from rob­beries — and $19,559 returned to another police depart­ment. The money was from a theft reported in another juris­dic­tion, the report shows.

Osterkamp said that when the inven­tory was embarked upon two years ago, inves­ti­ga­tors had no idea how much dys­func­tion would be uncov­ered in the evi­dence unit, even after being warned of prob­lems by both Haller and for­mer evi­dence cus­to­dian Shan­non Champion.

“It was a great shock to us,” said Osterkamp, who at one time dur­ing the mid-1990s rec­om­mended sev­eral sug­ges­tions on how to over­haul the pro­ce­dures in the unit. “We had no idea it was to the extreme that it was.”

Haller could not be reached Tuesday.

Osterkamp said the Police Depart­ment is wait­ing for the Florida Depart­ment of Law Enforce­ment to com­plete its inves­ti­ga­tion of the evi­dence room practices.

Hayes said Tues­day in an email that the FDLE will send its rec­om­men­da­tions to the State Attorney’s Office; those rec­om­men­da­tions could call for crim­i­nal charges against Haller if prob­a­ble cause is found. At this point the only tar­get of any such charges would be Haller, who was assigned to the evi­dence unit in 1988, Osterkamp said.

Last week, the police chief sent out an email con­cern­ing the agency’s re-accreditation sta­tus and the fact that it was not awarded because of the evi­dence room prob­lems and the thefts by clean­ing crew employee Corey Fontana of Holly Hill, accord­ing to arrest reports.

Fontana was con­victed of grand theft and is serv­ing an 18-month sen­tence in state prison. He told Ormond Beach detec­tives that he has a drug prob­lem and admit­ted to tak­ing $3,000 cash and heroin used for train­ing dogs from the police evi­dence room, the report states. Police said Fontana also stole cash from City Hall.

Osterkamp said the fact that any­one could break into the evi­dence room was issue enough for the Florida Com­mis­sion on Law Enforce­ment Accred­i­ta­tion to not award the re-accreditation.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Fisher Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Inc., KOMO News Net­work, komonews.com
BYLINE: Denise Whitaker
Link to Arti­cle
One Video

Poulsbo, WA

POULSBO, Wash. — A state audit found Poulsbo Police Depart­ment lacked over­sight over its own evi­dence locker after gold, guns and cash mys­te­ri­ously disappeared.

The miss­ing items prompted the audit, which was released on Tues­day. The report rec­om­mended the depart­ment tighten up on record­keep­ing and con­trols over the con­tents of the locker.

On the list of miss­ing items is a gold neck­lace, which cost the city’s insur­ance com­pany more than $1,000 to replace, as well as $2,000 in cash that was sup­posed to be trans­ferred from the police depart­ment to the city’s finance department.

Semi-automatic hand­guns set to be destroyed also dis­ap­peared from the locker. The state traced the guns back to a police clerk respon­si­ble for trans­port­ing the guns. That for­mer clerk, Amanda Dixon, has been charged with theft.

Poulsbo Mayor Becky Erick­son said her con­fi­dence in her police chief has not wavered. She added the depart­ment has made sig­nif­i­cant changes to pre­vent sim­i­lar inci­dents in the future.

“We’ve moved the police. We have a new evi­dence locker. We have new soft­ware and we have new per­son­nel,” said Erickson.

The police depart­ment is now located in City Hall, and it now uses new soft­ware that includes a bar code sys­tem that will keep track of all pieces of evi­dence in the pos­ses­sion of the police department.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Gray Tele­vi­sion, Inc., KKTV 11 News, kktv.com
BYLINE: Asso­ci­ated Press, KKTV / AP
Link to Article

Pueblo County, CO

Tara Adame Admits To Tak­ing Money

Guilty. That is the plea entered in by a for­mer Sheriff’s Office employee who was accused of steal­ing evidence.

Tara Adame will now need to serve pro­ba­tion and pay resti­tu­tion after plead­ing guilty to steal­ing from the evi­dence room. A judge may also decide to sen­tence Adame to spend time in jail.

11 News spoke exclu­sively with Sher­iff Kirk Tay­lor, who tells us he thinks the plea deal is fair.

Tay­lor says this case has taken its toll on his employ­ees and the com­mu­nity alike, and hopes now to move forward.

Adame is the for­mer head of the evi­dence and prop­erty depart­ment at the PCSO. The 36-year-old was arrested for steal­ing thou­sands of dol­lars and dozens of pre­scrip­tion drugs from the evi­dence room.

Adame plead guilty to felony theft and first degree offi­cial mis­con­duct. Charges of drug theft and evi­dence tam­per­ing were dropped as part of the deal. She is sched­uled for sen­tenc­ing on April 24.

Tay­lor says the hard­est part about this case was that her actions vio­lated the public’s trust, some­thing he hopes to gain back.

“We work very, very hard with our inter­nal poli­cies to make sure that this doesn’t hap­pen. But ulti­mately this is a human busi­ness, and you are deal­ing with 330-plus employ­ees. So unfor­tu­nately it does hap­pen. It’s how you deal with it and how you address it that I think is impor­tant for the pub­lic,” said Taylor.

As part of the deal, Tay­lor asked that Adame con­fess her crimes on paper and in open court to show the pub­lic that she acted alone.

He says a num­ber of his employ­ees in the same depart­ment under­went unde­served scrutiny as part of the out­side inves­ti­ga­tion con­ducted by the Col­orado Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion, because of Adame’s actions.

Attached to the plea agree­ment is a list that details how she altered records to steal the funds, total­ing $12,880.75. Those dol­lars were taken from 13 dif­fer­ent cases.

“I took things that didn’t belong to me, and abused my posi­tion,” Adame said when she for­mally accepted the plea deal in court Friday.

When asked how she did that, she responded: “by stealing.”

“I think it was very impor­tant that she take respon­si­bil­ity for it and I think ulti­mately it will help in the end not only for her own heal­ing process, but the heal­ing process of the agency as well,” said Taylor.

Tay­lor tells 11 News that their agency was the one that dis­cov­ered the thefts, and quickly took action. In order to give the inves­ti­ga­tion cred­i­bil­ity, they had the CBI do an out­side inves­ti­ga­tion after find­ing evi­dence of the theft in their inter­nal investigation.

Tay­lor hopes the thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tions and this guilty plea will help gain back the public’s trust and restore cred­i­bil­ity to the agency.

“No mat­ter how much tech­nol­ogy or how many checks and bal­ances you have in place, you are still deal­ing with human beings who make mis­takes and ulti­mately com­mit crimes. But I’m very happy that we were able to find it and effec­tively address it and move for­ward,” said Taylor.

11 News was ini­tially told stolen evi­dence was tied to at least 15 cases, some dat­ing back to 2008. The dis­trict attorney’s office now tells 11 News that it didn’t inhibit those cases, includ­ing a mur­der case.

Pre­vi­ous court doc­u­ments 11 News obtained showed that inves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered more than $10,500 and 200 var­i­ous pain pills were miss­ing from at least 15 cases. Adame plead guilty to steal­ing over $12,000 from 13 cases.

Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, Tay­lor requested that the CBI assist regard­ing an alleged theft from their evi­dence vault on Sep­tem­ber 7.

Only two peo­ple had access into the evi­dence stor­age area. Evi­dence Cus­to­dian Brenda Vigil was cleared of sus­pi­cion after tak­ing a poly­graph. She said that Adame would not pro­vide her any access to the drugs or money. Adame was the main care­taker of guns and drugs in the evi­dence room.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say a review of the com­puter track­ing sys­tem revealed that Adame made sus­pi­cious record changes. The affi­davit stated that Adame rela­beled over $6,500 to “mis­cel­la­neous” sta­tus, so the money recently con­fis­cated in a drug case could be destroyed. She made the changes in the com­puter sys­tem on July 18, 2011, the day before evi­dence was sched­uled to be destroyed.

The loca­tion of the evi­dence was also changed to the “drug room,” some­thing offi­cials con­firmed should never hap­pen, say­ing that money would never be stored in a drug room and would never be destroyed.

Time sheets showed that Adame was the only one work­ing in the evi­dence room that day.

Inves­ti­ga­tors believe that Adame could have deposited stolen money into her account in order to pay off her debts.

Dur­ing an inter­view with the CBI, Adame stated that she “under­stood why she would be sus­pect as evi­dence cus­to­dian, but her finan­cial sit­u­a­tion doesn’t make her a criminal.”

Adame resigned from her posi­tion as Evi­dence Cus­to­dian on Sep­tem­ber 8, the day after she was put on admin­is­tra­tive leave for mis­use of her pur­chas­ing card.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say she was steal­ing evi­dence for more than a year, from June 2010, to June 2011. Adame also allegedly had a track record of using a county-issued credit card for per­sonal use.

Accord­ing to an affi­davit, she admit­ted to it, but thought it was okay if she reim­bursed them. But when she tried, her check bounced.

“I would like to thank CBI for their invalu­able assis­tance in bring­ing an end to this probe,” Tay­lor said. He also wants to thank the dis­trict attorney’s office for their hard work and ded­i­ca­tion on the case.

Adame will be sen­tenced April 24.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org