IAPE Evidence Blog

The Repos­i­tory, CantonRep.com, cantonrep.com
BYLINE: Lori Mon­sewicz CantonRep.com staff writer
Link to Article

Can­ton, OH

CANTON — Sev­eral pounds of cocaine from a 2007 crim­i­nal case are miss­ing from the Can­ton Police Department’s Prop­erty Room, prompt­ing an inter­nal investigation.

Chief Dean McKimm said Wednes­day he asked the FBI to assist and that some police depart­ment employ­ees may be given a poly­graph test.

John Dysart, super­vi­sory senior res­i­dent agent in charge of the Can­ton FBI office, con­firmed McKimm’s request.

“He asked if we could help with a few things so they could sort it out,” Dysart said. “He asked if we could lend a hand.”

The miss­ing cocaine is already spoiled.

McKimm said offi­cers hop­ing to use some of it months ago for K-9 train­ing found it “ran­cid” and not useable.

Then again, McKimm said, the cocaine just may have been dis­carded with the trash.

“I don’t have any evi­dence that any­thing ille­gal was done,” he said. “One pos­si­bil­ity is that it just got straight thrown away with some other trash gen­er­ated by the destruc­tion process.”

Offi­cers dis­cov­ered about a week ago that the box con­tain­ing pos­si­bly four or five kilos — about 9 to 11 pounds  — was miss­ing. McKimm could not imme­di­ately recall the case linked to the cocaine.

The offi­cers had been prepar­ing for a “prop­erty destruc­tion” dur­ing which police receiv­ing a court release are per­mit­ted to destroy old evi­dence no longer needed in crim­i­nal cases. How it’s destroyed depends on the type of evi­dence, McKimm said.

“Cocaine and drugs are usu­ally burned, guns are melted, paper is shred­ded and then dis­carded,” he said.

Usu­ally, the effort involves the use of an incin­er­a­tor at a local factory.

The evi­dence in the prop­erty room is inven­to­ried and moved to a loca­tion where it can be pre­pared for destruc­tion, the chief said.

Typ­i­cally, some items are con­sol­i­dated into boxes while the boxes they had been in become trash and are discarded.

“What I believe is the prop­erty was mis­han­dled and pos­si­bly thrown away with some of the trash that was dis­carded dur­ing the prepa­ra­tion for the destruc­tion,” McKimm said.

“But we have to cover all the bases, and we’re cer­tainly going to inves­ti­gate so that we can elim­i­nate any pos­si­bil­ity of any crim­i­nal activ­ity by any officer.”

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

The Den­ver Post, denverpost.com
BYLINE: Felisa Car­dona The Den­ver Post
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Den­ver, CO

Brian Hicks, from a Feb­ru­ary file photo. (John Pri­eto, The Den­ver Post)

Four kilo­grams of cocaine were mis­tak­enly destroyed by a Den­ver police prop­erty sergeant before the case against a noto­ri­ous gang king­pin could go to trial.

Now Brian Ken­neth Hicks is ask­ing a fed­eral judge to toss out his crack-cocaine-trafficking case or issue sanc­tions against pros­e­cu­tors for mis­han­dling evidence.

The Den­ver Police Depart­ment launched an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the destruc­tion of the cocaine, said Lt. Matt Murray.

Denver’s CBS4 first reported Hicks was mov­ing to have his case dis­missed because of the destroyed cocaine.

In Novem­ber 2006, Hicks was arrested after, police say, he tossed the kilos out a win­dow of a black Lexus sport util­ity vehi­cle dur­ing a chase.

Den­ver police kept the drugs at the prop­erty bureau, even though the case trans­ferred to fed­eral court when evi­dence of a wider con­spir­acy emerged.

The kilos were destroyed on May 11 while Sgt. John Zak? was purg­ing old property.

Doc­u­ments show Zak reviewed paper­work that said the state court case had been closed and did not make fur­ther inquiry as to whether a fed­eral court case existed. Zak also did not check an elec­tronic data­base that showed Den­ver dis­trict attor­ney inves­ti­ga­tor Robert Fuller? had placed a hold on the evidence.

Fuller inves­ti­gated the inci­dent and wrote in his report: “Sgt. Zak told this writer that the per­son­nel, includ­ing him, do not take the time to con­tact assigned detec­tives because the detec­tives often fail to respond to their inquiries regard­ing the destruc­tion of evi­dence. Sgt. Zak told this writer that the sys­tem of con­tact­ing the assigned detec­tives is a waste of time.”

Mur­ray declined to com­ment specif­i­cally on Zak’s state­ments to Fuller or the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the destruc­tion of the kilos. He said that the depart­ment stores more than half a mil­lion items in its prop­erty bureau and audits have shown mis­takes are extremely rare.

Pros­e­cu­tors have pho­tographs of the cocaine and had it ana­lyzed by a lab and could use that evi­dence at trial.

Hicks’ attor­ney, Martha Eske­sen, wrote that she wasn’t noti­fied by pros­e­cu­tors until Aug. 18, dur­ing a pass­ing con­ver­sa­tion at the fed­eral cour­t­house. A for­mal noti­fi­ca­tion wasn’t made until Sept. 9.

Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the Col­orado U.S. Attor­ney, declined to com­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors will file a response to the motion Oct. 24.

Judge Wiley Daniel set a hear­ing on Dec. 18.

Hicks, 32, was con­victed of mur­der ear­lier this year for order­ing his gang asso­ciates to kill Kalon­ni­ann Clark, a state wit­ness who was going to tes­tify against him in a 2005 attempted-murder case.

He is serv­ing life plus 120 years in state prison.

The gang leader also is known as the owner of the Chevro­let Tahoe? used in the 2007 fatal drive-by shoot­ing of Den­ver Bronco Dar­rent Williams. Hicks was never impli­cated in Williams’ death because he was in jail on the drug case at the time.

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

Canaiden Online Media Net­work, connecticutplus.com
BYLINE: Conencti­cut Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion
Link to Article

Hart­ford, CT

HARTFORD, CT — On the heels of a suc­cess­ful pilot project, the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Protection’s Drug Con­trol Divi­sion is offer­ing help to towns wish­ing to start a drug dis­posal drop-box pro­gram to remove unwanted pre­scrip­tion and over-the-counter med­ica­tions from res­i­den­tial households.

In July, the Drug Con­trol Divi­sion helped the Lower Fair­field County Regional Action Coun­cil and four local police depart­ments to cre­ate ongo­ing, secure col­lec­tion pro­grams for unwanted med­ica­tion. Since incep­tion three months ago, these sites have col­lected more than 50 pounds of unwanted med­ica­tion, Divi­sion Direc­tor John Gadea, RPh., said today.

“After host­ing mul­ti­ple col­lec­tion days where res­i­dents turned in old pre­scrip­tions and other drugs for safe dis­posal, the towns of Green­wich, Ridge­field, Wilton, and New Canaan wanted to make the col­lec­tion process per­ma­nent,” Gadea said. “We worked with their Regional Action Coun­cil and local police depart­ments to develop a plan that pro­vides great­est access for the com­mu­nity at the most rea­son­able cost to the towns.”

“This col­lab­o­ra­tion brought about a cost-effective, work­able solu­tion for the pilot com­mu­ni­ties, and now their out­come is avail­able to any com­mu­nity that wants to move for­ward with it,” Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Com­mis­sioner William M. Ruben­stein said. “For safety’s sake, com­mu­ni­ties need to pro­vide res­i­dents with a way to get unwanted, unused med­ica­tions out of their homes in a way that is secure and envi­ron­men­tally friendly. This option cer­tainly meets those objec­tives, in addi­tion to being effi­cient and low-cost.”

The plan involves plac­ing a locked, well marked, drop-box in local police depart­ments, where res­i­dents can dis­card their unwanted or unused med­i­cines any time the police depart­ment lobby is open. Res­i­dents need not com­plete forms nor answer ques­tions about the items they drop off; how­ever, the boxes do not accept nee­dles or liq­uid medications.

When the col­lec­tion con­tainer inside a drop-box is filled, two des­ig­nated police offi­cers or an evi­dence clerk and a police offi­cer seal the con­tainer and place it into evi­dence as aban­doned prop­erty, fol­low­ing the police department’s usual pro­ce­dures. The col­lected med­ica­tions are then peri­od­i­cally destroyed through wit­nessed incineration.

The cost to each town is min­i­mal, requir­ing only a one-time cost of $500 to $600 for the drug drop-box. Some towns found a cor­po­rate donor for the drop-box. Since the med­i­cines are “law enforce­ment aban­doned prop­erty,” towns are not charged for incineration.

Gadea says the pro­to­col has received approval from the fed­eral Drug Enforce­ment Agency as a safe and secure means of drug dis­posal at the com­mu­nity level, and hopes that more towns will adopt the strategy.

“It’s a one-time effort that pays for itself almost imme­di­ately, in terms of remov­ing unwanted drugs on an ongo­ing basis, rather than sched­ul­ing, pro­mot­ing and host­ing rou­tine drug col­lec­tion events,” he said.

The writ­ten pro­to­col for towns wish­ing to estab­lish a secure, local drug drop-box is now online at www.ct.gov/dcp on the home page. To learn more, please con­tact the Depart­ment of Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion Drug Con­trol Divi­sion at (860) 713– 6065 at drug.control@ct.gov.

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