IAPE Evidence Blog

News Her­ald, newsherald.com
BYLINE: CHRIS SEGAL / News Her­ald Writer
Link to Article

Bay County, FL

Bay County Sheriff’s Office Crime Scene Inves­ti­ga­tor Chris Reynolds takes fin­ger­prints from a piece of paper in Lynn Haven Wednes­day. TERRY BARNER / The News Herald

PANAMA CITY — There’s a secret base­ment down­town full of drugs and mur­der weapons. It’s down a flight of stairs, past an old, out-of-place paint­ing of a land­scape and through a door with two locks that no one per­son holds both keys to.

The fridge in the back of the room keeps the DNA fresh. Dozens of pis­tols and rifles, a bow, some arrows and at least one samu­rai sword are there.

It’s the clerk of court’s evi­dence vault, and it’s the last stop before destruc­tion for the evi­dence used to con­vict crim­i­nals in Bay County.

“There’s more paper­work than any­thing else,” Donna Fowler said. “Really it’s just a base­ment with a bunch of junk.”

Fowler is the crim­i­nal depart­ment man­ager at the clerk’s office. She doesn’t go into the base­ment. It’s kind of scary and the drugs lan­guish­ing there con­tribute to a funky odor.

In Lynn Haven, the evi­dence locker at the Bay County Sheriff’s Office is arranged by crimes. Evi­dence over here per­tains to vio­lent crimes. Those stereos and video games are bur­glar­ies or robberies.

The back of the room smells con­sid­er­ably fresher than the clerk’s vault. This must be evi­dence from drug cases – yep, there’s a pound of dope right there. Sev­eral pounds maybe. That sack could def­i­nitely hold sev­eral pounds. There’s a whole mar­i­juana plant actually.

In many Bay County crim­i­nal cases, this is the first stop for the evi­dence that will be used in pros­e­cu­tions. Roughly 13,000 pieces of evi­dence in more than 35,000 crim­i­nal cases pass through this room each year, said Inves­ti­ga­tor Shan­non Mitchell, one of four crime scene inves­ti­ga­tors and tech­ni­cians who work back here.

When deputies col­lect evi­dence, they bring it here, where it is logged into the sys­tem, pack­aged, sealed and labeled. There are rows and rows of rifles, dozens of pis­tols hang­ing from the walls. Some of this stuff, like the muzzle-loader rifle there, looks like it’s been here since the civil war.

BSCO’s locker has a fridge that con­tains mag­gots from a death case. There’s a new machine that allows the CSIs to use super­glue to recover fin­ger­prints. It’s actu­ally just like those detec­tive shows, but slower, Mitchell said. There’s a machine for bloody clothes, which need to dry before they can be pack­aged and sealed.

Evi­dence of a crime must be saved for years. A case doesn’t end just because someone’s been con­victed of a crime. The evi­dence can’t just be tossed out when someone’s locked up. The appeals process can last for years, espe­cially in mur­der cases. A con­vic­tion over­turned may call for a new trial, so there’s always the off-chance that evi­dence will be needed again.

“These guys are really awe­some at what they do,” Sher­iff Frank McK­ei­then said dur­ing a brief visit to the lab. “Get­ting it is just a part of it. It’s what they do with it that counts.”

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

KCRA-TV, kcra.com, Hearst Sta­tions Inc.
Link to Arti­cle
One Video

Sacra­mento, CA

Worker Dropped Evi­dence Enve­lope, Author­i­ties Say

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A Sacra­mento police prop­erty clerk was wounded by bul­let shrap­nel Thurs­day morn­ing when she acci­den­tally dropped an evi­dence enve­lope, author­i­ties said.

The bul­let went off at about 9:45 a.m. at the police prop­erty man­age­ment build­ing on Sequoia Pacific Boule­vard, Sgt. Norm Leong said.

Shrap­nel hit the clerk, a 10-year vet­eran, in the right leg.

She was taken to UC Davis Med­ical Cen­ter where she was treated and released before 1 p.m., Leong said.

The bul­let wasn’t in a weapon or clip, offi­cials said. They described the acci­dent as extremely rare.

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

San Anto­nio Express-News, METRO AND STATE NEWS; Pg. 2B
BYLINE: Guillermo X. Gar­cia, STAFF

San Anto­nio, TX

A bomb scare at the city magistrate’s office trig­gered some anx­ious moments as dozens of man­a­cled inmates were tem­porar­ily evac­u­ated from the build­ing Wednes­day evening.

The inci­dent occurred hours after a dis­grun­tled state prison inmate appar­ently mailed a white pow­dered sub­stance that proved to be non­toxic to the fed­eral cour­t­house Wednes­day morn­ing, trig­ger­ing an evac­u­a­tion of that facility.

Police said they were unsure if the inci­dents were connected.

Dur­ing the 20-minute inci­dent at the magistrate’s office shortly before 7 p.m., about 50 inmates were removed from hold­ing cells and escorted out­side to a chain-link fence enclo­sure as bomb dis­posal offi­cers entered the building.

A host of law enforce­ment offi­cers sur­rounded the inmates, most of whom were at the facil­ity in the 400 block of South Frio to have their bail set.

Besides those already in cus­tody, a hand­ful of pris­on­ers being brought to the facil­ity were kept inside police cruis­ers in the secured park­ing lot while the bomb squad inves­ti­gated. They were quickly hus­tled into the rear of the build­ing after the all-clear, said police Sgt. Mark Hubbard.

San Anto­nio police bomb dis­posal offi­cers iso­lated the device, which one super­vi­sor described as man-made, about 6 inches by 2 inches, shaped like a cylin­der with wires attached at the top.

The device was inside sus­pected stolen equip­ment in the police prop­erty room in the magistrate’s offices, Hub­bard said.

Bomb dis­posal experts were unsure what the device was, he said.

“They will take it apart or det­o­nate the device, depend­ing on what they think it may be,” Hub­bard said.

He said the device was found inside one of sev­eral boxes of elec­tron­ics that had been seized by police ear­lier in the day when they arrested two bur­glary suspects.

“There was a lot of equip­ment inside the impounded vehi­cle,” Hub­bard said. “Once police got the boxes unloaded and were going through the con­tents, they came upon this sus­pi­cious device.”

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