IAPE Evidence Blog

Durant Daily Demo­c­rat, durantdemocrat.com is in Durant, OK
BYLINE:
Link to Article

Caddo, OK

A pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing has been set for the for­mer Caddo police chief accused of steal­ing a firearm from the department’s evi­dence locker.

Dur­ing a court con­fer­ence Wednes­day for Troy Glover, a pre­lim­i­nary hear­ing was set for March 8.

Glover, 38, was charged Dec. 12 with embez­zle­ment fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by the Okla­homa State Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions that Glover took a revolver that had been seized in a traf­fic stop and traded it to a man for another firearm.

Caddo Coun­cil ter­mi­nated Glover dur­ing a spe­cial meet­ing last month.

Glover is free on bond.

In other crimes, Bryan County sheriff’s deputies have been busy inves­ti­gat­ing thefts dur­ing the past few days.

Rick Lay­mon, Fore­man for Bryan County Dis­trict No. 3, told Deputy Vinny Cacace that approx­i­mately 50 gal­lons of diesel fuel was stolen out of a road grader parked at the Old Blue Store.

A hay hauler owned by Dou­glas Parks was stolen at Eagle Lake Bot­tom Road, accord­ing to a report by Deputy Joey Wel­ton Tucker. The hauler had dual hay spikes and sil­ver rims, and was val­ued at $400.

Deputy Cacace inves­ti­gated a bur­glary of a res­i­dence in the 3600 block of Silo Road. Crys­tal Pittman said that when she came home, she dis­cov­ered he husband’s bow was miss­ing from the garage. After enter­ing the house, she saw that a com­puter, and sev­eral firearms had been stolen. There was no sign of forced entry.

A washer and dryer was stolen from Jes­sica Hamill’s trailer home in the 2700 block of North First Avenue. She told Deputy Cacace that when she arrived home, she saw that her front door was unlocked and a win­dow had been opened.

Numer­ous items, includ­ing car­bu­re­tors and wheels, have been stolen from Jerry Dickerson’s prop­erty on Maxwell Road, accord­ing to a report by Deputy Cacace. In a writ­ten state­ment, Dick­er­son said the thefts had been hap­pen­ing over the last four years.

A tool box con­tain­ing numer­ous tools was stolen out of the Joseph Dou­glas Woods’ pickup in the 800 block of Upper West River Road, accord­ing to a report by Deputy Frank Burrola.

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

The Plain Dealer, blog.cleveland.com
BYLINE: Pat Gal­bincea, The Plain Dealer
Link to Article

Euclid, OH

Euclid — Jim Repicky has been a police offi­cer for 32 years, but two of his worst days occurred in the past four years.

Eight months after he was sworn in as police chief in Feb­ru­ary 2007, a pop­u­lar police offi­cer, George Brentar, was chas­ing a speeder when his cruiser hydroplaned into a pole on an entrance ramp to Inter­state 90 near East 207th Street and caught fire, killing him.

And it was eight months ago that another well-liked offi­cer, Sgt. Kevin Blakely, shot him­self in front of Repicky and two other super­vi­sors after being asked why he hadn’t coop­er­ated with an inves­ti­ga­tion started in Jan­u­ary by the Cuya­hoga County Sheriff’s Office.

Repicky, who has spent 30 of his 32 years on the Euclid police force, retired Dec. 21.

“I’ll take with me many good mem­o­ries when I leave,” Repicky said, “but those two are eas­ily the worst two days of my life.”

Blakely’s sui­cide, which came so sud­denly and unex­pect­edly on April 20 that Repicky said no one in the room had time to stop him, is a major rea­son the 56-year-old Repicky is retiring.

On July 10, Euclid Mayor Bill Cer­venik named Capt. Tom Brinkman as act­ing chief, say­ing Repicky had lost the con­fi­dence of his fel­low offi­cers because of the Blakely incident.

Since Cervenik’s move, Repicky has been over­see­ing sev­eral projects and help­ing Brinkman with the department’s 2012 budget.

In Novem­ber, the Cuya­hoga County Sheriff’s Office found that Blakely, a 28-year vet­eran, had stolen $40,000 in cash from the department’s evi­dence room and had deposited $24,000 meant for the Euclid Fra­ter­nal Order of Police into his per­sonal check­ing account.

In review­ing the sheriff’s report, Assis­tant Cuya­hoga County Pros­e­cu­tor Rick Bell said there was enough evi­dence to present to a grand jury to have indicted Blakely for theft of both law enforce­ment trust fund money and police offi­cer union dues.

Despite the report, Repicky crit­ics like Euclid Ward 2 Coun­cil­woman Made­line Scarniench said she hasn’t changed her mind.

“No, my opin­ion of Jim Repicky hasn’t changed,” she said. “I read the report and still have some doubts. I don’t think Kevin worked alone. The report says mis­man­age­ment of the evi­dence room has been going on for years, but it doesn’t say how many years.

“We didn’t keep good track of records, and the prob­lem starts from the top down. That being said, we have to move on, and I wish the for­mer chief well in his retirement.”

As chief, Repicky said he accepted the respon­si­bil­ity but couldn’t under­stand why crit­ics put him on trial with­out know­ing the full story that he could not tell with­out com­pro­mis­ing the investigation.

“It was a bomb that blew up, and I was left try­ing to pick up the pieces,” he said.

Cer­venik said that despite the inci­dent with Blakely, Repicky was a good police chief.

“Jim was an asset to the Police Depart­ment and our com­mu­nity, and he’ll be missed,” Cer­venik said. “He went through one of the most dif­fi­cult times a police depart­ment can go through — a sit­u­a­tion which makes his retire­ment more dif­fi­cult — but he acted in a pro­fes­sional man­ner. He is a very good man.”

Repicky helped develop an emer­gency oper­a­tion plan for the city, had firearms upgraded, and formed a com­mit­tee that has enabled Euclid to receive nearly $3 mil­lion in grants in his time as chief.

He said the biggest high­light of his career was work­ing in the nar­cotics unit as a detec­tive from 1995 to 1997.

“At that time, it was a whole new world of inves­ti­ga­tion,” Repicky said. “As a detec­tive, you’d start with noth­ing but a tip and then work your way hop­ing for an arrest and a conviction.”

His nar­cotics career ended when he was pro­moted to cap­tain in Jan­u­ary 1997.

A humor­ous seri­ous inci­dent hap­pened in 1981, when three armed men robbed an auto parts store in the win­ter. Repicky was involved in a high-speed chase until the rob­bers left the free­way in Willoughby Hills and then tried to run for it. Trou­ble was, there was a foot of snow on the ground.

“You don’t run very far when there is that much snow on the ground,” Repicky said. “They also couldn’t get their guns out.”

Another high­light was meet­ing Pres­i­dent George W. Bush when he vis­ited Lin­coln Elec­tric in July 2008.

For now, Repicky will spend time with his wife of 31 years, Chris­tine, plus do vol­un­teer work, golf and fish. A good wrestler at 112 pounds for St. Joseph High School in 1977 – 78, he has made him­self into a low-handicap golfer.

He has not ruled out get­ting back into police work.

“To say I was dis­ap­pointed with what hap­pened ear­lier this year is an under­state­ment,” he said, “but I wouldn’t rule out work­ing in a police depart­ment again. For now, I’m ready to relax. To the pub­lic I will say this. They need to trust the Police Depart­ment. If there are inad­e­qua­cies or wrong­do­ings, we are able to police ourselves.”

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: pgalbincea@plaind.com, 216 – 999-5159

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

The Daily News, galvestondailynews.com
BYLINE: Christo­pher Smith Gon­za­lez, The Daily News
Link to Article

La Mar­que, TX

LA MARQUE — Drugs, money and pos­si­bly firearms all went miss­ing from the School Dis­trict Police Department’s evi­dence room at some point dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the pre­vi­ous police chief, Tim­o­thy Fields, the cur­rent police chief for the school dis­trict, said.

Fields said he learned of the miss­ing items when he con­ducted an audit soon after he was appointed chief in July 2010. Fields would not go into specifics about the weapons reported missing.

Fields said he noti­fied the Texas Rangers, which often inves­ti­gates other law-enforcement agen­cies, about the miss­ing evi­dence when he first did the audit. Since then, he also has found an offense report writ­ten by a for­mer school dis­trict offi­cer on June 29, 2009 that states evi­dence had gone miss­ing, Fields said.

He also has found an April 2009 email between for­mer police Chief Rus­sell Wash­ing­ton and the school district’s human resources direc­tor dis­cussing miss­ing evi­dence, Fields said.

Wash­ing­ton could not be reached for comment.

Fields was appointed police chief after Wash­ing­ton was fired in 2010. At the time, Wash­ing­ton was under indict­ment in an alleged attempt to fal­sify doc­u­ments to obtain a title to a vehicle.

The charges were dropped, and Wash­ing­ton has demanded his old job back, along with compensation.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the miss­ing evi­dence was under way, and no sus­pects had been iden­ti­fied, Fields said.

“This is not some­thing that was done on a whim,” Fields said of the inves­ti­ga­tion. “The only thing I’m doing is try­ing to pro­tect the integrity of the department.”

Some­one needs to be held account­able for the miss­ing evi­dence, Fields said.

He said one of the rea­sons he was adamant about fol­low­ing through with the inves­ti­ga­tion was he didn’t want to be left respon­si­ble for some­thing that did not hap­pen under his watch.

“I don’t want it to blow up in my face,” Fields said.

The miss­ing evi­dence was kept in a locked file cab­i­net in a room at the high school, Fields said. Only the school district’s police offi­cers had access to it, he said. Fields said he now is the only offi­cer who has access to that room.

He said he has asked for assis­tance from the dis­trict attorney’s office and the fed­eral Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives. He said Texas Rangers have come by the depart­ment and that he was work­ing with them to file the paper­work the Rangers need.

Ecomet Bur­ley, super­in­ten­dent for the La Mar­que school dis­trict, said he had been made aware of the miss­ing items by Fields.

“It is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the chief of police into the miss­ing items and the incon­sis­ten­cies in the report that was filed,” Bur­ley said.

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