IAPE Evidence Blog

citizen-times.com

Asheville, NC

The audit of the Asheville Police Depart­ment evi­dence room shows what every­one had feared: A lot of evi­dence is miss­ing, espe­cially drugs. There is no sub­sti­tute for thor­ough, strict safe­guards to avert a repetition.

Up to 200 evi­dence parcels could be miss­ing drugs, Dis­trict Attor­ney Ron Moore said Tues­day after receiv­ing the final report on an audit done by an out­side firm. Moore said he could not deter­mine whether any pend­ing court cases may be compromised.

Other prob­lems were a poor cat­a­loging sys­tem and moun­tains of clut­ter. “They found a lot of items that had been lying around for a long time,” Moore said. “Stuff has to go out the door as cases are dealt with.”

Most of the drugs believed miss­ing were from cases already resolved and were des­ig­nated for the “burn pile.” It doesn’t take a rocket sci­en­tist to fig­ure out that those drugs prob­a­bly wound up on the illicit market.

The inquiry began nearly a year ago, after Moore learned that long­time evi­dence and prop­erty man­ager William Lee Smith had resigned after being sus­pended. After Moore’s request, a sam­ple audit was begun.

On April 1, Moore and a defense attor­ney found that 397 oxy­codone tablets were miss­ing. Four days later Moore ordered the evi­dence room sealed and ordered a full, inde­pen­dent audit. He was crit­i­cal of police for not doing a full audit after his ear­lier request and for not telling him about early results.

Police Chief Bill Hogan defended his actions, say­ing that the depart­ment was fol­low­ing guide­lines by the Com­mis­sion on Accred­i­ta­tion for Law Enforce­ment Agen­cies Inc. Later in April the chief announced his retire­ment, effec­tive in May.

Now that the full audit is com­pleted, the city’s old evi­dence room can be reopened so pros­e­cu­tors can pur­sue cases involv­ing evi­dence stored there. A new room had been opened to han­dle evi­dence col­lected since the old room was sealed.

This is not the first time Bun­combe County has had an evi­dence room scan­dal. An audit con­ducted after Van Dun­can became sher­iff in 2007 uncov­ered mas­sive prob­lems dur­ing the 12-year tenure of Bobby Med­ford. Audi­tors could not account for 223 hand­guns, 114 rifles and drugs listed on 1,318 entry sheets. Rape kits and evi­dence bags had been mishandled.

Other major scan­dals in recent years have occurred in Florida, Ten­nessee, Texas, New Mex­ico and Louisiana. A mil­lion dol­lars in drugs was miss­ing in Day­tona Beach, Fla., and nearly $3 mil­lion in Nashville.

Evi­dence rooms con­tain a lot of items that are of value both to the prosecutor’s case and in their own right. Big money means big temp­ta­tion. Rigid con­trols are nec­es­sary to make sure no one gives into temp­ta­tion or sim­ply becomes sloppy in procedures.

Assis­tant City Man­ager Jeff Richard­son said the city wants to work with Moore and the audi­tors “to under­stand what the find­ings are and what the city needs to do mov­ing for­ward to address the con­cerns. We’re com­mit­ted to do what­ever we need to do to get the processes and stan­dards where they need to be.”

There are a lot of ideas out there. The prop­erty and evi­dence man­age­ment guide for Cal­i­for­nia Police Offi­cers Stan­dards and Train­ing has exhaus­tive rec­om­men­da­tions, includ­ing both annual and sur­prise audits.

The man­ual says audits should be con­ducted by peo­ple “who are not rou­tinely or directly con­nected with the con­trol of prop­erty and evidence.”

An evi­dence room scan­dal in Hous­ton, a city with a strong-mayor form of gov­ern­ment, resulted in over­whelm­ing ref­er­en­dum approval in 2004 for a mea­sure to allow the elected city con­troller to audit all departments.

Asheville does not have to rein­vent the wheel, merely see that it rolls properly.

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

The Mis­sis­sippi Press, blog.gulflive.com
BYLINE: April M. Havens, The Mis­sis­sippi Press
Link to Article

Moss Point, MS

Keith Davis, Moss Point police chief

MOSS POINT, Mis­sis­sippi — City aldermen’s first meet­ing of 2012 was con­tentious and chaotic at times, but the board ulti­mately took mul­ti­ple actions, sev­eral affect­ing the police department.

Alder­men agreed to hire Tar­sha Johnson-Watts as a part-time evi­dence tech­ni­cian after Chief Keith Davis told them the department’s evi­dence room “is in shambles.”

The room con­tains evi­dence that should have been prop­erly destroyed long ago, he said, “and the prob­lem has compounded.”

The board also agreed to hire George Chaix on a con­trac­tual basis for assess­ing, purg­ing, clean­ing and orga­niz­ing the room based on Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion of Prop­erty and Evi­dence stan­dards. Chaix will be paid a flat rate of $1,000.

The hir­ing deci­sions came only after heated debates over pre­vi­ously fired employ­ees and whether the chief should be able to hire part-time work­ers who are not enti­tled to pro­tec­tion under the Civil Ser­vice Commission.

Alder­man Tommy High­tower was in favor of both hirings.

“The more per­son­nel we put over there, the quicker this (prob­lem) goes away,” he said of the evi­dence room.

Alder­men also later agreed to allow Davis to apply for a $6,400 equip­ment grant, but after Alder­man Sher­wood Brad­ford learned the grant had a 25 per­fect match, he crit­i­cized the chief for “con­stantly” chang­ing his budget.

Bick­er­ing among alder­men had some audi­ence mem­bers shak­ing their heads and oth­ers laughing.

At one point, Mayor Ane­ice Lid­dell refused to carry a motion by Brad­ford, and Alder­woman Shirley Cham­bers quickly told her she was “break­ing the law.”

Also at Tuesday’s meet­ing, aldermen:

* Agreed to let Thomp­son Engi­neer­ing apply for a Mis­sis­sippi Depart­ment of Trans­porta­tion grant that could con­nect the city’s side­walks and bring a 3.5-mile loop to down­town. It would also include an obser­va­tion deck for bird­ing enthu­si­asts.
* Accepted the res­ig­na­tion of police dis­patcher Hope Mer­rill.
* Hired Stephen Fur­ney to replace Mer­rill as dis­patcher.
* Voted to require demo­li­tion of a home at 4430 Elder St. The owner must clean the prop­erty by Feb. 1.
* Set a min­i­mum pay­ment on old city court fines at $25.
* Agreed to use tide­lands funds on river­front projects, such as pub­lic restrooms and bulk­head repairs. 

After the meet­ing, Lid­dell con­firmed the police depart­ment will be get­ting a new station.

City lead­ers learned last month that the Mis­sis­sippi Devel­op­ment Author­ity will allow them to con­sol­i­date mul­ti­ple fund­ing sources to build a new police depart­ment out­side the flood zone.

The city will use $1.5 mil­lion in sur­plus funds from a Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina sup­ple­men­tal grant, $389,000 from the Fed­eral Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency and other Hur­ri­cane Katrina-related insur­ance funds to build a new com­plex out­side the flood zone at the old Bel­lview Shop­ping Center.

The need for a new sta­tion is high, Davis said.

“The cit­i­zens of Moss Point deserve a pub­lic safety facil­ity they can be proud of … and so do the employ­ees,” he said. “The build­ing we’re in now was a refur­bished build­ing from a refur­bished build­ing, and it just doesn’t work for law enforcement.” 

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

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