IAPE Evidence Blog

The Ari­zona Repub­lic, azcentral.com
BYLINE: Lind­sey Col­lom and Caitlin McGlade — The Ari­zona Republic

Pinal County, AZ

An inde­pen­dent audit of the Pinal County sheriff’s property-and-evidence unit details years of mis­man­age­ment and over­stuffed stor­age units with the poten­tial to harm prosecutions.

More than 300 pages of the report by California-based Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc. high­lighted prob­lems with the way evi­dence was han­dled, detail­ing a bloated, hap­haz­ard inven­tory of items that should have been destroyed, sold or returned to right­ful owners.

Audi­tors esti­mated the inven­tory in excess of 300,000 items accu­mu­lated over more than 30 years. The report said that between 65 and 80 per­cent of the inven­tory could be discarded.

“It’s like a big junk closet,” said Elias John­son, a Sheriff’s Office spokesman. “It looks like an episode of ‘Hoarders.’ ”

Sheriff’s offi­cials say the audit high­lighted long-standing issues from pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions, and they called it a “hot potato” left in the hands of Sher­iff Paul Babeu. Tim Gaffney, the sheriff’s com­mu­ni­ca­tions direc­tor, said Babeu became aware of prob­lems in Jan­u­ary 2009 when a precinct sergeant was accused of not log­ging seized prop­erty into the unit.

“We didn’t real­ize how severe the issue was,” Gaffney said. “We didn’t know three days into office whether this was an iso­lated inci­dent or whether this was much larger.”

Fol­low­ing three inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions — one by the Sheriff’s Office and two by out­side con­trac­tors — Babeu requested an inde­pen­dent audit in July 2010 to “iden­tify all of the issues need­ing cor­rec­tion in our prop­erty and evi­dence section.”

What Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems found dur­ing an inspec­tion Dec. 6 – 10 was an under­staffed unit respon­si­ble for a main ware­house that was stocked beyond capac­ity, and sev­eral ancil­lary stor­age areas and sub­sta­tion evidence-collection sites with inad­e­quate security.

Audi­tors found urine sam­ples — some saved long past the cor­re­spond­ing cases’ adju­di­ca­tion — stocked in 60 spots with­out any des­ig­nated shelf or bin in the refrig­er­a­tor where they sat. Per­sonal belong­ings, held for safe­keep­ing after the orig­i­nal own­ers were arrested, sat col­lect­ing dust in the stor­age rooms. Audi­tors found metham­phet­a­mines last reviewed in Octo­ber 2008 that had yet to be destroyed.

More than 25 per­cent of the inven­tory had not been logged elec­tron­i­cally, and the unit was three months behind in doc­u­ment­ing new items. Of the files that had been gen­er­ated, some didn’t match with phys­i­cal objects. Guns marked as destroyed were actu­ally still at the armory. There was no record-keeping of money stored in the unit.

Improp­erly track­ing items and money is no anom­aly for evidence-storage rooms among law-enforcement agen­cies, said Joe Latta, direc­tor of the audit­ing com­pany. Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems has audited 65 agen­cies in Canada and the U.S. and offers sug­ges­tions to clean up the mishaps and main­tain order based on stan­dards of the Com­mis­sion on Accred­i­ta­tion for Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies, the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Police, and the Inter­na­tional Prop­erty and Evi­dence Asso­ci­a­tion.

Latta said many of the prob­lems come down to staffing and the size of the bud­get for agen­cies everywhere.

The Pinal County Sheriff’s Office is “try­ing their hard­est with the lim­ited resources they have, and almost every depart­ment across the coun­try has the same prob­lems,” Latta said.

Stock­pil­ing old, use­less evi­dence slows down the effi­ciency of agen­cies and makes it more dif­fi­cult to locate mate­ri­als for exist­ing cases, he said.

In a ran­dom search, audi­tors selected a firearm logged in a com­puter and hunted for it in stor­age. They had to sort through 300 boxes before they found it. Audi­tors took ran­dom sam­plings of 20 pack­ages at one stor­age loca­tion and found that 75 per­cent of the mate­ri­als were eli­gi­ble for review, mean­ing the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on the cases had expired or the cases had likely been closed. Audi­tors con­cluded that the source of this prob­lem often started with the offi­cer in charge of the case.

Ide­ally, offi­cers would give the own­ers of prop­erty that was being held a receipt and tell them they had a cer­tain num­ber of days to claim their belong­ings or they would be dis­posed of. But audi­tors learned that many of these receipts were not issued. Audi­tors also learned that deputies often would not respond to requests from evi­dence tech­ni­cians to review objects for poten­tial dis­posal. The report cited one exam­ple in which an evi­dence tech­ni­cian tried to reach one deputy via e-mail twice over the course of about a month and got no response.

Sheriff’s offi­cials are review­ing the audit and for­mu­lat­ing an action plan to rec­tify issues, Gaffney said. The hir­ing of three new evidence-unit tech­ni­cians is already in the works, he said, and the depart­ment plans to sub­mit a fund­ing pro­posal to county super­vi­sors to hire four more techs and pur­chase unspec­i­fied equip­ment to com­ply with audit recommendations.

Mean­while, the depart­ment has installed more secure lock­ers for evi­dence stor­age at its sub­sta­tions, and employ­ees on light duty have been help­ing unit staff review inven­tory and dis­pose of items.

Both Babeu and County Attor­ney Jim Walsh say they are not aware of any issues raised in the audit that have affected any past or cur­rent cases. But the pos­si­bil­ity “is real, and this is why we are try­ing to address it now so no vic­tims will ever be denied jus­tice,” Babeu said.

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

Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
SECTION: NATIONAL; Pg. 1
BYLINE: By Bren­dan McCarthy, Staff writer
July 14, 2009 Tuesday

New Orleans, LA

State law may have been vio­lated, it says

New Orleans Police Depart­ment offi­cials ran a hap­haz­ard prop­erty and evi­dence room from which more than $200,000 went miss­ing, and later failed to notify the proper author­i­ties in writ­ing of the miss­ing money, accord­ing to a newly released state audit.

The highly crit­i­cal report from state Leg­isla­tive Audi­tor Steve The­riot states that NOPD offi­cials may have vio­lated state law in fail­ing to notify the audi­tor and the Orleans Parish dis­trict attor­ney in writ­ing of any mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of pub­lic funds. It also rec­om­mends that the city obtain an opin­ion from the attor­ney gen­eral on whether the law was broken.

Police Super­in­ten­dent War­ren Riley wrote in response to the audit that he didn’t know state law required such writ­ten noti­fi­ca­tion. Riley also dis­puted whether the miss­ing evi­dence monies could be con­sid­ered pub­lic funds. He did, how­ever, request an attor­ney general’s rul­ing on the matter.

In a tele­phone inter­view Mon­day night from Aus­tralia, Riley said con­sul­tants had been brought in early last year to assess the issue and that all the appro­pri­ate improve­ments were made. 

He also said that Theriot’s office is mis­in­ter­pret­ing the state law regard­ing noti­fi­ca­tion of miss­ing pub­lic funds. Riley argued that the miss­ing money was “sim­ply evi­dence,” and not money that had been for­feited to the police fol­low­ing the clo­sure of a case. Because of this, the unac­counted for money should not be con­sid­ered pub­lic funds, Riley said.

Theriot’s office had never been noti­fied before the audit that more than $200,000 was missing.

Dis­trict Attor­ney Leon Can­niz­zaro said Mon­day that the NOPD had not noti­fied his office in writ­ing of miss­ing funds.

“We are con­cerned about the evi­dence … but I can’t say any pros­e­cu­tions have been inhib­ited because of this,” he said.

The state audit found “major defi­cien­cies” within the NOPD, includ­ing an inad­e­quate sys­tem for track­ing money that was con­sid­ered evi­dence or prop­erty. Police offi­cials did not know how much money was being stored, and should have been deposit­ing these funds into a secure bank account, the report states. The audit notes that han­dling of evi­dence suf­fered from inad­e­quate secu­rity and staffing, sloppy orga­ni­za­tion and a lack of writ­ten policies.

“By not safe­guard­ing these assets, adverse effects on crim­i­nal court pro­ceed­ings may be expe­ri­enced,” the report says.

Riley acknowl­edged Mon­day night that the prop­erty divi­sion was in dis­ar­ray fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Katrina.

“We had a dys­func­tional, not well-managed, prop­erty room” in the wake of a nat­ural dis­as­ter, Riley said.

But these issues, Riley said, were reme­died. He noted that the evi­dence room had been moved to a new facil­ity, secu­rity mea­sures imple­mented and that the NOPD has started deposit­ing money into an account mon­i­tored by the city’s Finance Department.

“All of the things that need to be in place are in place,” he said.

Mon­day night, Riley crit­i­cized the auditor’s han­dling and release of the report. He alleged that con­tents of the draft report were leaked weeks ago to the media.

Riley’s com­ment about a con­fi­den­tial­ity breach con­founded the auditor’s office, which weeks ago sat down sep­a­rately with Riley and City Coun­cil mem­bers to brief them on findings.

“This is a pub­lic report,” said Dan Daigle, direc­tor of com­pli­ance audits for Theriot’s office. “We really are con­fused about that statement.”

— Con­fer­ence in Melbourne —

Riley is listed in an online brochure as a keynote speaker at The Aus­tralian Police and Emer­gency Ser­vices Lead­er­ship Sum­mit, slated for Mon­day and Tues­day at the Uni­ver­sity of Melbourne.

Riley was to dis­cuss “his aggres­sive pur­suit of re-vitalizing a police force amidst cat­a­strophic cir­cum­stances, and how he is restor­ing law and order and pub­lic con­fi­dence in law enforce­ment,” accord­ing to the brochure.

The state audit pig­gy­backs on another recent assess­ment of the NOPD’s Evi­dence and Prop­erty Divi­sion. That review, con­ducted at the NOPD’s request early last year by the California-based Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc., found numer­ous pol­icy, pro­ce­dural and oper­a­tional weak­nesses within the NOPD divi­sion and made rec­om­men­da­tions on each issue. The find­ings were sim­i­lar to those of the state auditor.

Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems also noted that in many instances, the NOPD did not fol­low best prac­tice stan­dards set by the Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence.

Since receiv­ing the con­sul­tants’ assess­ment, the NOPD has addressed “a num­ber of the noted defi­cien­cies,” accord­ing to the state audit. The police force has writ­ten and imple­mented a pro­ce­dures man­ual, moved into a new facil­ity, reor­ga­nized evi­dence and prop­erty and ini­ti­ated a new evidence-tracking system.

How­ever, the state audit notes, the depart­ment has not taken action on sev­eral of the defi­cien­cies, con­tin­u­ing to “leave prop­erty and evi­dence held by the NOPD sus­cep­ti­ble to loss and/or theft.”

— Probe deter­mines suspects —

The few improve­ments left to be made, Riley argued Mon­day night, are reliant on addi­tional fund­ing. He esti­mated that more than 80 per­cent of the sug­gested reforms have been implemented.

Prob­lems with the evi­dence room were made pub­lic last Novem­ber when Riley acknowl­edged that about $19,000 in cash owed to a for­mer defen­dant was miss­ing from the room. He promised a thor­ough investigation.

Riley said Mon­day the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion is ongo­ing. Four sus­pects have been iden­ti­fied, though he declined to elaborate.The state audit shows that Riley and other NOPD lead­ers had long been aware that tens of thou­sands of dol­lars were unac­counted for.

The report out­lines five inci­dents in which NOPD offi­cials were alerted to miss­ing money.

In Decem­ber 2007, NOPD man­agers were noti­fied that $10,700 was miss­ing from the evi­dence room, accord­ing to the audit. They were noti­fied again two months later that nearly $11,000 more was missing.

Fol­low­ing an inven­tory in March 2008, NOPD lead­ers learned that about $117,000 was miss­ing, though nearly 10 per­cent of that money, or $12,000, was later recov­ered after it was found to be wrongly filed.

In Octo­ber 2008, a local attor­ney went pub­lic with claims that his client’s $19,050 was miss­ing from the evi­dence room. And a month later, NOPD man­age­ment learned that evi­dence bags had been tam­pered with and that another $85,000 was missing.

Since the first reports about cash miss­ing from the evi­dence room sur­faced last fall, the NOPD has declined to pro­vide doc­u­ments requested by The Times-Picayune, cit­ing an ongo­ing inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. The doc­u­ments the NOPD has refused to pro­vide include weekly staff reports that the news­pa­per believes should be pro­vided in accor­dance with Louisiana’s pub­lic records law.

Riley had crit­i­cized a for­mer high-ranking offi­cer last fall for lax secu­rity in secur­ing evi­dence, say­ing too many peo­ple had keys to the room under Capt. Danny Law­less’ watch.

But Law­less coun­tered by show­ing off a col­lec­tion of memos and paper­work in which he had warned super­vi­sors of the tem­po­rary facility’s secu­rity short­com­ings and man­power short­ages, call­ing them a “recipe for disaster.”

Riley con­tin­ued Mon­day night to lay blame on the pre­vi­ous com­man­der, say­ing not one item has come up miss­ing since he was replaced. Riley, how­ever, declined to call Law­less a sus­pect in the case.

.… …
Bren­dan McCarthy can be reached at bmccarthy@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3301.

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

Albu­querque Tri­bune (New Mex­ico), SECTION: EVENING; Pg. A1
BYLINE: Mag­gie Shep­ard mshepard@abqtrib.com / 823‑3679

Albu­querque, NM

Inspec­tors to police: Weed inventory

After their intro­duc­tory tour of the Albu­querque Police Department’s evi­dence room, a pair of inde­pen­dent experts already have started a list of pos­si­ble changes to the trou­bled operation.

At the top of the list: Stop stor­ing so much stuff.

Pro­fes­sional evi­dence room inspec­tors Joseph Latta and Robert Giles arrived in Albu­querque on Mon­day to begin a week­long con­sul­ta­tion on pro­ce­dures, phi­los­o­phy and logis­tics at the Police Department’s evi­dence stor­age warehouses. 

The ware­houses have been the sub­ject of a year­long attor­ney general’s inves­ti­ga­tion into employee theft.

Recent employee alle­ga­tions of mis­man­age­ment and neg­li­gence there led to the abrupt retire­ment of Police Chief Gilbert Gallegos.

Before he left, Gal­le­gos requested Latta’s $19,500 consultation.

Latta and Giles spent Tues­day tour­ing the room and talk­ing with employ­ees. The two experts from Bur­bank, Calif., work for Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc. Both are affil­i­ated with the non­profit Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence, a pro­fes­sional orga­ni­za­tion for evi­dence room tech­ni­cians and prop­erty managers.

Latta has a back­ground in gro­cery ware­hous­ing and more than 20 years in polic­ing, a com­bi­na­tion he says gives him insight and skill into this type of work.

Lit­tle sug­ges­tions came to mind first: Move shelves down to make more room for stor­age bins, and put bar codes at the top of envelopes instead of the bot­tom for ease of scan­ning into the operation’s track­ing database.

Longer-range projects emerged by the end of the day: Stream­line the research process for dis­cov­er­ing expired cases, add extra steps of paper­work to track evi­dence checked out of the room for trial, and sim­plify the code and fil­ing sys­tem for evi­dence and stor­age bins.

But these changes are only part of the solu­tion of the operation’s No. 1 problem.

“If there is any­thing that con­cerns me, it’s the size of the inven­tory,” Latta said.

The evi­dence room holds base­ball bats, beer cans and cig­a­rette butts from 25 years ago, said Capt. Larry Son­ntag, the offi­cer in charge of the repos­i­tory. About 1 mil­lion pieces of evi­dence are stored, more than the nor­mal amount for a depart­ment the size of Albuquerque’s, Latta said.

“Only about 1 per­cent of evi­dence is ever taken into court, but you don’t know what that 1 per­cent is,” Latta said.

That uncer­tainty has prompted Albu­querque and other police depart­ments across the nation to keep every­thing they can for as long as they can, with evi­dence items kept in stor­age even after cases are com­pleted or the defen­dant dies.

Son­ntag, on the job since Feb­ru­ary, is over­see­ing a piece-by-piece inven­tory of the 1 mil­lion items with the goal of destroy­ing every piece of unnec­es­sary evidence.

But that dis­tinc­tion isn’t black and white. Dis­trict Attor­ney Kari Bran­den­burg has said she’d like to see every piece of evi­dence held for­ever but real­izes that isn’t possible.

Latta said exam­in­ing the inven­tory at an aver­age of 30 min­utes per item will take years.

Son­ntag expects 18 to 24 months for the inventory.

Some of the room’s 11 civil­ian tech­ni­cians and the 10 offi­cers brought in tem­porar­ily to help with the inven­tory are research­ing each case and check­ing the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on the crimes.

Latta and Giles will exam­ine the writ­ten pol­icy for decid­ing when evi­dence is to be destroyed or auc­tioned. The two have helped about 60 of the other depart­ments they have con­sulted with this issue. They have toured about 300 evi­dence rooms.

Com­puter sys­tems and Albu­querque has a good one, they said can be set to alert tech­ni­cians when a case has exceeded its statute of lim­i­ta­tions, Giles said.

Latta said the com­puter sys­tem isn’t the only good thing Albuquerque’s evi­dence room has going for it.

The build­ing struc­ture is intact, the staff is respon­sive and aware of secu­rity issues, video sur­veil­lance is exten­sive, and Son­ntag and his staff want to make it a bet­ter place, Latta said.

“We’ve been work­ing very hard,” Son­ntag said, to make changes and cor­rect years of inef­fi­cient poli­cies. He plans to fin­ish the last four to six years of his career over­see­ing the room. Latta said hav­ing one per­son in charge of the room for that long will be a benefit.

As leader of the room, Son­ntag has the author­ity to imple­ment any other changes he chooses from Giles and Latta’s final report.

Son­ntag said mov­ing shelves shouldn’t be a prob­lem and could be ini­ti­ated imme­di­ately. But changes in how offi­cers check out evi­dence to take to court could take longer to imple­ment and require dis­cus­sions with new Police Chief Ray Schultz, Bran­den­burg and judges.

Luck­ily for Son­ntag, he says, those peo­ple and other crim­i­nal jus­tice lead­ers are serv­ing on Mayor Mar­tin Chavez’s Blue Rib­bon Com­mis­sion cre­ated last week to mon­i­tor progress at the room.

“There is a sense of invig­o­ra­tion, and (tech­ni­cians) are as excited as any­body to be a part of hav­ing a sys­tem­atic approach to re-establishing the integrity and cred­i­bil­ity of the evi­dence room,” Son­ntag said.

GRAPHIC:

PHOTO BY:Rick Sci­belli Jr./Special to The Tri­bune PHOTO: b/w Capt. Larry Son­ntag (right) of the Albu­querque Police Depart­ment escorts Joseph Latta (left) and Robert Giles of Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc. through the department’s much-maligned evi­dence room in the North Val­ley. The two were exam­in­ing the oper­a­tion Tues­day after being hired as con­sul­tants to review poli­cies and pro­ce­dures. “We are here today to fix things, not sur­prise any­one,” Giles said.

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