IAPE Evidence Blog

Omaha World-Herald
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Omaha, NE

Never trust a rusty gun.

One Omaha police offi­cer learned that les­son ear­lier this month while check­ing a shot­gun into the evi­dence room at Cen­tral Police Head­quar­ters, 505 S. 15th St.

Offi­cer Dar­relle Bonam, a vet­eran of more than five years with the depart­ment, was book­ing the gun into evi­dence. While pulling back the rusty slide to check if it was empty, he touched the trig­ger and the gun went off, hit­ting a money-counting machine.

No one was injured in the inci­dent, which occurred Feb. 3.

Offi­cer Jacob Bet­tin, a police spokesman, said that any­time a firearm is dis­charged in a city build­ing, the mat­ter is reviewed by the Omaha Police Department’s safety review com­mit­tee to deter­mine whether proper pro­ce­dures and safety tech­niques were fol­lowed and whether dis­ci­pli­nary action is in order.

“This shows firearms are dan­ger­ous, even for peo­ple trained to prop­erly han­dle them,” Bet­tin said.

— Jason Kuiper

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

myeyewitnessnews.com
BYLINE: Jeni DiPrizio, Email: jdiprizio@myeyewitnessnews.com
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Mem­phis, TN

MEMPHIS, TN — We’ve found another prob­lem at the Mem­phis Fire Depart­ment. This time it has to do with the room where evi­dence is kept for arson cases.

Accord­ing to a 2008 report, the evi­dence room has been a mess for years. Pic­tures show cans of flam­ma­ble items rust­ing away. The report found the fire depart­ment was vio­lat­ing its own fire codes by improp­erly stor­ing material.

It says a num­ber of items in stor­age have started to dete­ri­o­rate caus­ing a toxic environment.

The prob­lem is now on City Coun­cil­man Jim Strickland’s radar. Strick­land says “I don’t want to risk pros­e­cu­tion of indi­vid­u­als because of the faulty stor­age of evidence.”

For more than a year, evi­dence has been sit­ting inside stor­age con­tain­ers next to the evi­dence room, while the city has been ren­o­vat­ing the build­ing to get the room up to code. All those com­bustible mate­ri­als are sit­ting together in a stor­age con­tainer dur­ing hot Mem­phis sum­mers and cold win­ters. Mem­phis Fire insists the metal stor­age con­tain­ers are cli­mate controlled.

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

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Ben­tonville, AR

EAST CAMDEN — A fired Ben­tonville Police Depart­ment evi­dence offi­cer and crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor lost her state-issued cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Thursday.

At a meet­ing here, the Arkansas Com­mis­sion on Law Enforce­ment Stan­dards and Train­ing deter­mined that Michelle Mar­garet Smith should be barred from work­ing as a police offi­cer in the state because of poorly orga­nized evi­dence belong­ing to 330 sep­a­rate cases in Ben­tonville and what her for­mer chief, James Allen, called “bizarre” behavior.

After the com­mis­sion handed down its deci­sion, Smith sat qui­etly and shook her head, look­ing stunned.

Smith’s attor­ney, William Put­man of Fayet­teville, argued that a mal­func­tion­ing com­puter sys­tem and a reac­tion to the com­bi­na­tion of a cer­tain antibi­otic med­ica­tion com­bined with doctor-prescribed steroid injec­tions caused both her dimin­ished job per­for­mance and what he called her “manic” emo­tional state.

When it came time for Smith to tes­tify, she described her love of crime scene work and said her prob­lems were behind her.

“I’m great,” she told the com­mis­sion. “I’m men­tally and phys­i­cally bet­ter.” Smith said the days when she would sweat through her clothes and the nights she would sweat through her sheets — all for no clear rea­son — were behind her.

Also gone were her vio­lent dreams.

Allen said of that time in Smith’s life: “It was just baf­fling to us what was occur­ring. It was not the same Michelle Smith we had known for years.” Allen hired Smith from the Jones­boro Police Depart­ment in 2005. She had worked there nearly seven years with no issues.

But in late 2008, after repeated expo­sure to methamphetamine-making chem­i­cals that required she get med­ical treat­ment, some­thing changed.

The evi­dence room began to fall into dis­ar­ray. After Smith’s per­sonal prob­lems wors­ened — her par­ents moved in with her for a time to help, she said — her super­vi­sors learned that she had stopped tak­ing evi­dence to the Arkansas Crime Lab­o­ra­tory in Lit­tle Rock. They found other evi­dence — 18 cases’ worth — in a taped-shut dehu­mid­i­fier box in the main prop­erty room. Smith also failed to sep­a­rate out drugs, guns and cash for stor­age in a more-secure room out­side the main police headquarters.

Allen said the chain of cus­tody was not com­pro­mised, so the mis­han­dled evi­dence ulti­mately did not jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases. But it took “hun­dreds of hours” to find that out, he said.

Ben­tonville police Lt. Jon Simp­son said Smith also failed to prop­erly store evi­dence she col­lected at crime scenes, includ­ing bul­let frag­ments from an officer-involved shooting.

Allen fired Smith on April 13.

At the hear­ing Thurs­day, Smith and her doc­tor, William McCol­lum, said they felt sure that the com­bi­na­tion of the antibi­otic Lev­aquin and steroid injec­tions to help her recover from methamphetamine-related chem­i­cal expo­sures were at the core of her prob­lems and would not be repeated.

McCol­lum said he saw no issues with Smith per­form­ing the duties nec­es­sary to be a police officer.

Smith said she would not seek a job in another prop­erty room if allowed to keep her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, but she would like to work as a crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor again.

“I love crime scene [inves­ti­ga­tion],” she said.

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