IAPE Evidence Blog

Hearst Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Inc., seattlepi.com
BYLINE: SCOTT GUTIERREZ, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF
Link to Article

King County, WA

A for­mer King County Sheriff’s nar­cotics detec­tive has been arrested in Arkansas after he was accused of steal­ing ille­gal drugs that were intended for use as a train­ing aid for his police dog, author­i­ties say.

The detec­tive, Kristo­pher Kizer, 29, is charged with theft and felony pos­ses­sion of nar­cotics, a source in the King County Prosecutor’s Office confirmed.

U.S. Mar­shals arrested Kizer at a cour­t­house in Star City, Arkansas, where he’d gone to apply for a job with the Lin­coln County Sheriff’s Office, King County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Steve Stra­chan said.

“I’m not sure if that’s the def­i­n­i­tion of irony or not,” Stra­chan said. “But you just shake your head at this stuff.”

Two detec­tives were assigned imme­di­ately after the Sheriff’s Office became aware of mis­con­duct. They have been sent to Arkansas. “We take our pub­lic trust very seri­ously, and we are aggres­sive about hold­ing account­able any­one who vio­lates that pub­lic trust,” Stra­chan said.

Kizer was a K-9 han­dler assigned to the Belle­vue office of the East­side Nar­cotics Task Force. The inves­ti­ga­tion began this month after Kizer’s res­ig­na­tion in Feb­ru­ary. Kizer stopped com­ing to work in Octo­ber 2010 and exhausted all his sick time and vaca­tion pay a few months later. After he resigned, detec­tives dis­cov­ered that sam­ples of cocaine and metham­phet­a­mine that had been seized and sup­plied to Kizer as train­ing aids for his dog were never returned, court doc­u­ments say.

He also never logged mar­i­juana seized dur­ing a traf­fic stop, court doc­u­ments say.

Court doc­u­ments say Kizer was accused in Octo­ber 2009 of slip­ping “some­thing” into the drinks of two women he met at a bar in Med­ford, Ore. Both women worked a hotel where Kizer was stay­ing while attend­ing a con­fer­ence for nar­cotics inves­ti­ga­tors. Med­ford police inves­ti­gated and deter­mined that no crime was com­mit­ted, but wrote a case report and noti­fied the King County Sheriff’s Office.

Sheriff’s detec­tive com­pleted a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion and found no evi­dence to to sup­port the alle­ga­tions. He received a let­ter of rep­ri­mand for con­duct unbe­com­ing after he was , Stra­chan said.

“But he was at a train­ing con­fer­ence and to even be around peo­ple who would make these alle­ga­tions is unpro­fes­sional,” Stra­chan said. “He was cer­tainly act­ing unpro­fes­sion­ally and we cer­tainly estab­lished that.”

Dur­ing his last few months on the job, fel­low offi­cers noticed that he’d been act­ing “moody” and seemed to be off on his own. He’d also told fel­low offi­cers his father was slain in a domes­tic vio­lence inci­dent in North Car­olina, court doc­u­ments say.

“This is still an open and ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion. We still have a lot of ques­tions that have to be answered in terms of where that prop­erty is located,” Stra­chan said. “We don’t know the rea­son the nar­cotics are gone. We don’t know whether it was for per­sonal use or for sale.”

In the spring of 2010, Kizer requested new sam­ples of ille­gal drugs to use as a train­ing aid for his dogs, includ­ing Ecstasy, cocaine, meth and mar­i­juana. He said his cur­rent sam­ples were “get­ting old” and received $20,000 worth of ille­gal nar­cotics from the Sheriff’s Office, accord­ing to court documents.

He was ordered to log the evi­dence in a case report and pre­vi­ously was instructed to store evi­dence in an evi­dence safe and not to take it home, court doc­u­ments say.

After he stopped com­ing to work, detec­tives and human resources employ­ees had trou­ble reach­ing Kizer. In Decem­ber, after meet­ing with his sergeant about his poor work per­for­mance, Kizer said he would trans­fer back to patrol.

In Jan­u­ary, how­ever, he told his sergeant he didn’t want to be a cop any­more and planned to resign. At one point, task force detec­tives arranged to meet him at his home to pick up a dog ken­nel and other police equip­ment. Kizer stated that he was still “hav­ing prob­lems deal­ing with the death of his dad, a shoot­ing he was involved with while on Patrol and things that hap­pened when he was in the mil­i­tary,” court doc­u­ments say.

In March, while Kizer and his wife were going through a divorce, Kizer’s father-in-law called police after find­ing a blue Igloo cooler in the couple’s garage that con­tained mar­i­juana and metal “First Aid” con­tain­ers labeled “coke” and “meth.” Detec­tives rec­og­nized the white metal con­tain­ers as the type used by Belle­vue police to store drug evi­dence. Inside were empty bag­gies that tested pos­i­tive for drug residue, court doc­u­ments say.

Kizer’s wife told police that he had started act­ing crazy and spend­ing hours in his garage. He’d been mov­ing stuff into the garage and at one time spent almost 48 hours dis­as­sem­bling com­put­ers, court doc­u­ments say.

The Sheriff’s Office is review­ing its poli­cies on evi­dence stor­age and whether any red flags were missed, Stra­chan said. Offi­cers had noticed a change in Kizer’s behav­ior and were watch­ing him closely while try­ing to sup­port him through his father’s death, he said.

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

www.coloradoconnection.com
BYLINE: Brit­tney Hop­per
Link to Arti­cle
One Photo
One Video

El Paso County, CO

COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO — In this spe­cial report, FOX21 News learns that hav­ing hard evi­dence is crit­i­cal to get­ting a con­vic­tion in court. That’s why the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office takes extreme mea­sures when han­dling evidence.

“Some­one sent a guy a grenade in the mail and when he opened it, it blew up and it killed him and it dam­aged the car pretty well,” said Dan Ist­van, evi­dence cus­to­dian for the El Paso County Sheriff’s office.

A red car has been sit­ting in the sheriff’s office’s dirt lot since 1994 — still no mur­der sus­pect but the evi­dence will stay. 

“Most of the evi­dence, espe­cially if it’s a mur­der, will be kept for­ever unless it’s released by the Dis­trict Attorney’s Office,” said Istvan.

A dif­fer­ent red car was used for a kid­nap­ping where police say the vic­tim was put inside the trunk and put up a good fight but didn’t win.

“Car­bon monox­ide got to her. And killed her,” said Istvan.

A new trend police say they are see­ing more and more of are arson cars. The sus­pect will light the car on fire to try and burn any evi­dence. Police tell FOX21News this does make it more dif­fi­cult, but ulti­mately inves­ti­ga­tors say they will get to the bot­tom of it.

In order to pre­serve the integrity of evi­dence of a crime scene, human con­tact should be avoided. Just a few cells from skin can com­pro­mise the results. It’s very impor­tant to keep care­ful track of the chain of cus­tody of each sam­ple, accord­ing to Ist­van. The chain of cus­tody is a list of date and times and loca­tions of peo­ple who have han­dled the crime scene evidence.

“Deputies put evi­dence into the deputy’s lock­ers. Every morn­ing we empty the lock­ers out and check them and make sure they are pack­aged right and put on a shelf and marked and that’s where it will stay,” said Istvan.

The old­est box is from a homi­cide from 1972. Inside the boxes evi­dence ranges from papers to a rub­ber band, but bloody cloth­ing is han­dled dif­fer­ently. A bloody shirt will go into a dry­ing room then stored in a freezer so it won’t smell.

Some may ask, why keep so many items for so long?

If just one piece of evi­dence takes a crim­i­nal off the streets, police say it’s worth it.

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

www.naplesnews.com
Link to Arti­cle
BYLINE: RYAN MILLS

Naples, FL

NAPLES — Tiny bars of soap, stiff tow­els, Gideon Bibles — there are just some things that guests expect when check­ing into any hotel.

But some lucky guest may have found an unex­pected gift inside a Naples hotel room last spring — a pack­age of cocaine — thanks to the Naples police depart­ment, no less.

Two vet­eran Naples police offi­cers lost a packet of cocaine dur­ing a train­ing exer­cise last spring, accord­ing to a recently released inter­nal affairs inves­ti­ga­tion. The cocaine was believed to have been left in a local Best West­ern hotel room.

How­ever, even though the alle­ga­tions were sus­tained, nei­ther offi­cer was rep­ri­manded in the case.

“It was looked at as strictly an hon­est mis­take by two hard­work­ing police offi­cers,” Naples police spokesman Michael Her­man said.

On May 13, offi­cers Chuck Anken­bauer, a 13-year-veteran, and Linda Lines, a 16-year-veteran, checked out a nar­cotics kit from the department’s prop­erty and evi­dence room so they could con­duct K9 train­ing at Naples High School, accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion. When they began hid­ing the two 2-gram pack­ets of cocaine that were sup­posed to be in the case, they real­ized that one of the pack­ets was missing.

Train­ing records indi­cate that the cocaine was prob­a­bly lost in April in either a Best West­ern hotel room, in the depart­ment park­ing lot, or in the rental car lot at the Naples Munic­i­pal Airport.

Both offi­cers sus­pect the cocaine was left inside the hotel room on April 29, because their rou­tine was dis­rupted that day when Lines, who usu­ally han­dles the nar­cotics, was called out to a scene, reports said. Anken­bauer ended up hid­ing the cocaine instead.

When Lines returned to resume the train­ing, both offi­cers’ dogs were “lively” — leaping on the bed, bit­ing pil­lows, knock­ing down pic­tures on the wall — and had to be secured to avoid dam­ag­ing the room, reports said. They decided to con­clude the train­ing ses­sion early.

Lines told an inves­ti­ga­tor that she did not remem­ber who col­lected the drugs that day, as she was more con­cerned with straight­en­ing up the room. She said that, at the time, there were no inventory-control mech­a­nisms in place to ensure that no drugs were miss­ing when sign­ing in or sign­ing out a nar­cotics kit.

That has since changed, Her­man said.

Now offi­cers have to doc­u­ment their train­ing items on a per-instance basis, Her­man said. Unit super­vi­sors will review those logs monthly, and a full inven­tory of the kit is done quarterly.

“These are highly respon­si­ble vet­eran offi­cers who as human beings made a sim­ple mis­take,” Her­man said. “They imme­di­ately noti­fied their super­vi­sors to the situation.”

- — -

Con­nect with Ryan Mills at www.naplesnews.com/staff/ryan_mills

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