IAPE Evidence Blog

StarNewsOnline.com
BYLINE: Brian Freskos, Brian.Freskos@StarNewsOnline.com
Link to Article

Wilm­ing­ton, NC

Phylisha Del­laPia shows some of the steps that have to be taken when rpocess­ing evi­dence at the Wilm­ing­ton Police Depart­ment. Del­laPia and her co-workers process thou­sands of pieces of evi­dence every year at the depart­ment. Photo by Ken Blevins

Most law-abiding cit­i­zens never get to han­dle mar­i­juana by the pound, plas­tic bags filled with thou­sands of ecstasy pills, blood-stained cash and AK-47 assault rifles. But for Phylisha Del­laPia, this is just another day in the office.

As one of two tech­ni­cians work­ing in the Wilm­ing­ton Police Department’s prop­erty and evi­dence ware­house, Del­laPia knows the rest­ing place of some of the city’s last-surviving rem­nants of past crimes, in some cases, from decades ago. In many ways, the 6,060-square-foot repos­i­tory in the belly of police head­quar­ters is like a pri­vate museum that tes­ti­fies to Wilmington’s darker side. Police work, after all, is not always pleas­ant business.

On one area lies the .44 cal­iber Smith & Wes­son revolver that acci­den­tally shot Bran­don Lee, Bruce Lee’s son, dur­ing the 1993 film­ing of “The Crow” in Wilm­ing­ton. In another box sits clothes, track impres­sions and pho­tographs of the scene in April 1978 when Offi­cer James Nunalee Sr. was shot and killed in an ambush out­side a con­ve­nience store on Wrightsville Avenue. Fixed along shelf E are 29 con­tain­ers with evi­dence from the city’s cold case homi­cides, items detec­tives occa­sion­ally sift through in hopes of solv­ing unan­swered cases.

These moments of Wilmington’s his­tory, told by the evi­dence that sits on those shelves, are part of what fas­ci­nates Del­laPia about her job. 

New evi­dence and recov­ered prop­erty pours into the ware­house daily, all with a story behind it. Most items are placed in heat-sealed plas­tic bags and handed to Del­laPia or her col­league, Casey Lud­lum, for stor­age. They mark each item with a bar code and store it on a shelf or on the ware­house floor, where it will stay until a case has been adju­di­cated or, in cases of found prop­erty, some­one claims it.

Cold case evi­dence, how­ever, must be kept indef­i­nitely if it con­tains poten­tial DNA.

Seized cash is only briefly kept at the depart­ment before it is deposited in a bank account. Once the case is wrapped up in court, the money is typ­i­cally trans­ferred to the local school board.

Crim­i­nal case evi­dence housed in the department’s ware­house runs the gamut from machetes and golf clubs used in assaults to pirated DVDs. Last year alone, tech­ni­cians processed 11,778 pieces of evi­dence and prop­erty, or about 981 items per month.

One box sched­uled for incin­er­a­tion later this year con­tains about 2,000 clear plas­tic balls that you can get out of a vend­ing machine at most gro­cery stores for a quar­ter. The only dif­fer­ence is that instead of a cheap plas­tic toy inside, the balls con­tained mar­i­juana, part of a drug dis­tri­b­u­tion oper­a­tion police squashed in 2008.

“This was a vice oper­a­tion,” Del­laPia said, lay­ing down a clear bag filled halfway with dark mar­i­juana seeds on the table where offi­cers pack­age their evi­dence for safekeeping.

Given the nature of what the depart­ment keeps locked in this room, offi­cials are reluc­tant to dis­cuss what kind of secu­rity fea­tures keep it pro­tected. But it might suf­fice to say that since the ware­house is inside the police depart­ment, it is sur­rounded by armed cops all hours of the day. 

It comes as lit­tle sur­prise that the tech­ni­cians, some of the few peo­ple with direct access the evi­dence, are put through a rig­or­ous screen­ing process – the depart­ment even checks their credit rat­ing – to make sure they abide by the utmost in ethics. There still exist numer­ous checks, like unan­nounced audits and over­sight from inter­nal affairs.

Progress made

Wilm­ing­ton has come a long way in the man­ner in which it pre­serves evi­dence. Prior to mov­ing into its cur­rent facil­ity in 2006, offi­cers worked out of an old rail­road build­ing turned makeshift police sta­tion on Red Cross Street. The evi­dence and prop­erty ware­house sat in what was essen­tially a base­ment never designed to house such vast amounts of sen­si­tive mate­r­ial. The result was dis­ar­ray, with boxes strewn about with lit­tle sem­blance of order.

“Stuff was every­where,” recalled Det. Lee Odham, who has served in the depart­ment for nearly 12 years.

When the police depart­ment moved to its cur­rent loca­tion on Bess Street, Del­laPia faced the daunt­ing task of restor­ing a sense of orga­ni­za­tion. She rid­ded the ware­house of evi­dence no longer needed, helped estab­lish a track­ing sys­tem so offi­cers could more effi­ciently locate items and stream­lined the paper­work process.

“She must be an angel from heaven,” Police Chief Ralph Evan­gelous said. “What is usu­ally a night­mare and an admin­is­tra­tive headache has turned into a well-run entity.”

Now, offi­cers like Odham can eas­ily pull up cases they want to re-examine. Recently, Odham paid a visit to the ware­house in order to comb through evi­dence in the case of Bar­bara Lewis, a woman stran­gled to death in 1977 and dumped in a park­ing lot in the 800 block of Princess Street. Given peren­nial advance­ments in DNA col­lec­tion, Odham scours these cases for any­thing that could be tested with new technology.

“There’s always some­thing, we just have to fig­ure out what it is and what it’s on,” he said. 

Not all police department’s oper­ate like Wilmington’s. Del­laPia, who was recently named pres­i­dent of the N.C. Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, has lever­aged what she has learned to advo­cate for prop­erty and evi­dence rooms statewide, par­tic­u­larly to adopt uni­form stan­dards for sub­mit­ting and stor­ing evi­dence. And she has openly called for tech­ni­cians to be cer­ti­fied by some inde­pen­dent author­ity, a process not cur­rently required.

For Del­laPia, a jaunty, 41-year-old Car­olina native who stud­ied crim­i­nal jus­tice at Cape Fear Com­mu­nity Col­lege and the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina Wilm­ing­ton, work­ing in the prop­erty room affords not only an oppor­tu­nity to learn about inter­est­ing cases but to act as a detec­tive herself.

Part of her job requires track­ing down the own­ers of lost or stolen prop­erty. One of her favorite suc­cess sto­ries is the case of five antique Zippo lighters. Using a name inscribed on one of the lighters, patent num­bers, prop­erty records and a will, she located the late owner’s sur­viv­ing fam­ily in another part of the state and got the items back to them.

“I like mak­ing sure peo­ple get their stuff back,” she said. “I like when the vic­tims come pick their prop­erty up and for them to have a good expe­ri­ence about their house or car get­ting bro­ken in to.”

Brian Freskos: 343‑2327

On Twit­ter: @BrianFreskos

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

News & Record (Greens­boro, NC), Rock­ing­ham Zone Edi­tion
SECTION: TRIAD; Pg. R1
BYLINE: Staff Reports

Rock­ing­ham County, NC

Lynn Umstead of Greens­boro has been named direc­tor of mar­ket­ing for the Chinqua-Penn Plan­ta­tion …
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Brenda Strick­land, a 28-year employee of Rock­ing­ham Com­mu­nity Col­lege, is retir­ing …
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Mary Lou Hern­don, 20, of Rei­dsville was nom­i­nated for a best actress award …
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Retired Eden Fire Mar­shal Dar­ryl Carter, now a mem­ber of the Eden City Coun­cil, was named the 2005 Fire Inves­ti­ga­tor of the Year …
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Rock­ing­ham County sheriff’s deputy Mike Camp­bell has cre­ated a prop­erty and evi­dence patch that can be worn by cer­ti­fied evi­dence tech­ni­cians at law enforce­ment agen­cies across the country.

Camp­bell sub­mit­ted his patch design to the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, which is based in Cal­i­for­nia and serves 44 states, includ­ing North Carolina.

The patch was fea­tured in the August issue of the association’s quar­terly mag­a­zine The Evi­dence Log and was titled “Wear It Proudly.”
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George Jor­dan, the senior custodian/groundskeeper at Rock­ing­ham Com­mu­nity Col­lege since 1995, is retiring …

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

Idaho Falls Post Reg­is­ter (Idaho), Main Edi­tion
SECTION: A; Pg. A1
BYLINE: By PHIL DAVIDSON

Idaho Falls, ID

Though the first-ever audit of the Police Department’s evi­dence room was broad in scope, much of it focused on the pro­ce­dural holes exploited by for­mer City Pros­e­cu­tor Kim­ball Mason. 

The audit, con­ducted by for­mer San Jose (Calif.) Deputy Police Chief Dan Bul­lock, con­cluded Mason alone was respon­si­ble for “unfor­giv­able crim­i­nal acts” but included rec­om­men­da­tions on how to stave off poten­tial abuses of the evidence-handling system.

Mason, who served as the city’s pros­e­cu­tor for 12 years, has been locked up since May 30 after admit­ting to two counts of grand theft for tak­ing guns from the IFPD’s prop­erty room and keep­ing them for his per­sonal use. He was charged with seven addi­tional counts last week after a state inves­ti­ga­tion revealed some of the guns he took from evi­dence cus­to­di­ans and claimed to destroy had turned up at his Idaho Falls home.

Since 2001, Mason pre­sented evi­dence cus­to­di­ans with at least 51 court orders –some legit­i­mate, some bogus — to release guns to him.

The Idaho Attor­ney General’s Office alleges he was repro­duc­ing judges’ sig­na­tures on some of the orders with­out the judge’s approval. But that type of anomy is unlikely to reoc­cur given the new safe­guards to pro­tect against crooks.

Idaho Falls Police Chief J. Kent Livsey, who told Bul­lock that prob­lems with the department’s evi­dence room prior to the Mason case were not on his “radar screen,” said he embraces the changes.

“We’re doing a lot of adjust­ments for the actions of one guy,” he said.

Some of the steps include:

- Every court order pre­sented to the department’s evi­dence cus­to­dian will be reviewed by a supe­rior offi­cer. If ques­tions are raised, Livsey said, the order will be taken to Bon­neville County Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Dane Watkins Jr., who will ask the court for a judi­cial review.

- The evi­dence cus­to­dian will receive addi­tional train­ing on prop­erty man­age­ment and be cer­ti­fied by the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence. The sergeant in charge of the evi­dence room will also get more training.

- Guns the depart­ment decides to destroy will be taken to Moun­tain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, where an agent from the Fed­eral Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives will super­vise their dis­man­tling. Pros­e­cu­tors will no longer be able to destroy guns, as Mason said he rou­tinely did.

Cops and Courts reporter Phil David­son can be reached at 542‑6750.

Quotable

Quote from Dan Bul­lock, an evi­dence expert and for­mer chief of police:

“It is unfath­omable to me how the laws of Idaho and the pro­ce­dures of the City of Idaho Falls could per­mit one per­son to remove items from the police prop­erty room and to then sell or trade those items for the ben­e­fit of that per­son or their office oper­a­tion with­out the review and approval of a higher authority.”

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