IAPE Evidence Blog

Car­roll County Times, carrollcountytimes.com
BYLINE: Car­rie Ann Knauer, Times Staff Writer
Link to Article

West­min­ster, MD

A strange sur­prise: About 20 stolen lawn orna­ments were placed in Rebecca Hale’s West­min­ster yard overnight Sat­ur­day. SUBMITTED PHOTO

Rebecca Hale wants her neigh­bors to know she didn’t steal their lawn orna­ments, even if they did end up in her yard Sun­day morning.

Hale, who lives in the 200 block of Jan­ice Way in West­min­ster, said she and her boyfriend Jonathan Chell left the house at 10 p.m. Sat­ur­day to go to a friend’s house and play cards. When they returned home at 5 a.m. Sun­day, she almost couldn’t believe that she had pulled up to the right house.

“My dri­ve­way was lined with about 20 stolen lawn orna­ments,” the 36-year-old said. “I thought to myself ‘It looks like some­body is about to have a yard sale.’”

There was a black wooden dog on a bench on her front porch, and a metal swan block­ing the door. At the bot­tom of her steps were a fam­ily of bun­nies to the right, she said, and to the left some angels and gar­den gnomes. One of the more sig­nif­i­cant pieces was a small cow statue that she esti­mated weighed more than 100 pounds.

“It was crazy,” she said. “I had a mil­lion thoughts going through my mind.”

Think­ing it was pos­si­ble that the lawn dis­play could have been a prank by a friend, she waited for some­one to speak up and take credit for it. When no one came for­ward, she called the West­min­ster police at 3 p.m. to report the dis­play, which she assumed was of stolen goods.

A police offi­cer came to check it out Sun­day, she said, and on Mon­day, they sent a city dump truck to col­lect the goods and take them to the police department.

West­min­ster police Lt. Dou­glas John­ston said it appears most of the lawn dec­o­ra­tions were stolen from the sur­round­ing neigh­bor­hood. Eight of the objects have already been reclaimed by the own­ers, who had reported them as stolen, he said.

John­ston said the items are all intact, and have been placed in the department’s prop­erty room. Some peo­ple may not have noticed that they were stolen yet, he said, or may have noticed and not thought about report­ing the theft.

Any­one in West­min­ster who had a lawn dec­o­ra­tion stolen this week­end should con­tact the West­min­ster police at 410 – 848-4646 and ask for the prop­erty clerk, he said.

“We don’t get this occur­ring that often,” John­ston said. “More than likely, it was juveniles.”

Hale said she took lots of pho­tos of the lawn dis­play with her cell­phone, and said she won’t soon for­get the episode.

“It would be cool if every­one got their stuff back,” she said.

Reach staff writer Car­rie Ann Knauer at 410 – 857-7874 or carrie.knauer@carrollcountytimes.com.

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

WFMY NEWS2, digtriad.com
BYLINE: Nick Needham

http://www.digtriad.com/news/local/article/166892/57/Chief-Explosive-Device-Was-Not-A-Risk-To-Randleman-Dam–

Link to Article

Greens­boro, NC

Greens­boro, NC — An impro­vised explo­sive device was found at the Ran­dle­man Regional Reser­voir Thurs­day afternoon.

Greens­boro Police Chief Ken Miller told WFMY News 2 Fri­day morn­ing that the device was small, wasn’t close to the dam and couldn’t com­pro­mise the dam. But, he added, it was big enough it could have hurt people.

The Chief also said the device was put in the water at Ran­dle­man Lake not long ago. He went on to give a time from between a few days to a week or two ago. He said this was a device some­one cre­ated to explode and could not have been a device used by con­struc­tion or road crews.

At this point, the explo­sive device is at the prop­erty evi­dence room at the Greens­boro Police Depart­ment. Because the device was found out­side the county, with a regional author­ity involved, there are many juris­dic­tions involved. Miller believes some­time this after­noon a deci­sion will be made as to which agency will han­dle the case.

Here is the back­ground of the device’s dis­cov­ery: the Greens­boro Police Department’s Haz­ardous Devices Team was requested to respond by the Pied­mont Triad Regional Water Author­ity at 3 pm. One of the authority’s offi­cers located the device and noti­fied the Ran­dle­man Police Department.

The device was found on the north­east shore­line of the reser­voir near the Ran­dle­man dam off of Jesse Small Road, accord­ing to a news release from the Greens­boro Police Department.

The device was secured uti­liz­ing the bomb robot and was ren­dered safe at the scene by 6 pm, accord­ing to the release. It was deter­mined to be an actual IED.

Greens­boro Police Chief Ken Miller told WFMY News 2 the device was a “small scale IED.” He said describ­ing it could ham­per the investigation.

“It’s a pretty rare event to come across an actual bomb,” Miller said.

Miller said it was unclear if some­one was tar­geted as there are no homes or devel­op­ment in the area where the IED was found.

The IED was found at the end of Jesse Small Road where it dead ends into a cove of the lake. The bomb is now being stored as evidence.

Miller said they are fol­low­ing sev­eral leads in the case.

No injuries or prop­erty dam­age was reported as a result of the event and it appears that the dam was never in any dan­ger of being dam­aged from the IED, accord­ing to the release.

The device and all related evi­dence was pho­tographed and secured by the crime scene inves­ti­ga­tors from the Greens­boro Police Depart­ment for foren­sic processing.

The Level Cross Fire Depart­ment and EMS units from Ran­dolph and Guil­ford Coun­ties also responded to the scene. The Fed­eral Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion was assist­ing with the investigation.

The remain­ing shore­line of the reser­voir was searched for any addi­tional sus­pected IED. The search will resume Fri­day morn­ing in an effort to help ensure the reser­voir waters are safe, accord­ing to the release.

The reser­voir is closed to boaters and fish­er­man until April 1, which was pre­vi­ously planned before Thurs­day discovery.

Inves­ti­ga­tors say other than the offi­cer who ini­tially recov­ered the IED, no one was endan­gered in any­way by the event.

Greens­boro police encour­age any­one who observes or finds a sus­pi­cious pack­age to notify law enforce­ment offi­cials immediately.

The inves­ti­ga­tion remains ongoing. 

WFMY News 2/GPD 

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

The North­land North­ern
BYLINE: Kristin Edge
Link to Article

Whangarei, New Zealand

Bulging Bucket: Hun­dreds of sets of keys have been handed in to lost prop­erty offi­cer Joe O’Malley-Ostermeyer at the police sta­tion Photo/Ron Bur­gin

There’s one man at Whangarei police sta­tion who may unlock the mys­tery over your lost keys.

Lost prop­erty offi­cer Joe O’Malley-Ostermeyer has hun­dreds of sets of keys that have been found all round the city and he is urg­ing any­one who has mis­laid keys to check with him before order­ing a new set.

A green bucket is close to over­flow­ing with the mis­laid metal and colour­ful keyrings.

There is one solid brass key that looks like it could unlock the front door to a castle.

Keyrings include expen­sive elec­tronic car door openers.

Another has an orange plas­tic tiki, another a piece of sheep skin and a third a fam­ily photo.

What is clear from exam­in­ing the pile of keys is that Whangarei peo­ple are clearly a thirsty bunch with most key rings con­tain­ing a bot­tle opener.

Most of the keys were found in the cen­tral city or in super­mar­ket carparks.

Mr O’Malley-Ostermeyer rec­om­mended peo­ple write their name, but not their address, on their keys, so if they were handed in it would be eas­ier to track the owners.

“It’s vir­tu­ally impos­si­ble to find the own­ers for these keys.

“A name would really help us.”

He wel­comed any­one who had lost keys over the last six months to come and search through the bucket.

Peo­ple who have lost keys in other areas of North­land were advised to con­tact their local police station.

Dur­ing the sum­mer break numer­ous wal­lets con­tain­ing cash have been handed in by hon­est Northlanders.

“Peo­ple who come in and have their wal­lets returned are so grate­ful they often want to say thanks to the per­son who has handed it in,” Mr O’Malley-Ostermeyer said.

Other items miss­ing an owner include a green and black spear gun, two tapa mats and a con­crete drill.

Con­tact Whangarei sta­tion on 09 430 4500 if you think any of these items belong to you.

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