IAPE Evidence Blog

The Her­ald Sun, heraldsun.com.au
BYLINE: Mark But­tler, Her­ald Sun
Link to Article

Mel­bourne, Australia

ALMOST 200 shot­guns, semi-automatics and revolvers held by Vic­to­ria Police can’t be accounted for, an embar­rass­ing audit has revealed.

The she­moz­zle has been exposed in a stock­take of thou­sands of guns held by police over the past 20 years.

Among the 186 guns con­firmed as miss­ing are police firearms and oth­ers used for foren­sic com­par­i­son and training.

Police admit many could have been lost, though some could have been destroyed with­out doc­u­men­ta­tion and list­ings for oth­ers could have been dupli­cated. The audit, which began last year, fol­lows two decades of sloppy records.

A police spokesman said not all of the weapons were lost, and the force expected most cases related to “poor his­tor­i­cal record keep­ing and track­ing of weapons”. Some of the guns iden­ti­fied may no longer exist.

“For exam­ple, firearms might have been destroyed, but not removed from our data­bases. Or dupli­cate entries have been made on data­bases. Or if the ser­ial num­ber on a weapon was entered incor­rectly, then we would be look­ing for a ser­ial num­ber on a firearm that does not exist,” he said.

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The force took secu­rity “extremely seri­ously”. “Our record keep­ing and track­ing of total firearms in the state, how­ever, has not been suf­fi­cient over the past 20 years, and we are now under­tak­ing exten­sive work to rem­edy the sit­u­a­tion,” he said.

Until last year there had been no attempt to rec­on­cile four sep­a­rate firearms databases.

The audit ini­tially found 500 gun records could not be rec­on­ciled. Three of 10,292 oper­a­tional guns are among those missing.

But the spokesman said he expected they’d be recov­ered soon.

But Firearms Traders Asso­ci­a­tion sec­re­tary Graeme Forbes said this was unlikely.

“If they’ve been look­ing for months, they’re not going to find them,” he said.

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

The Edmon­ton Jour­nal edmontonjournal.com / vancouversun.com
Link to Article

Yel­lowknife NT CN

Edi­to­r­ial

EDMONTON — A Yel­lowknife RCMP offi­cer has been charged in con­nec­tion with money miss­ing from an evi­dence locker and threats made to fel­low officers.

Sgt. Larry O’Brien has been charged with theft under $5,000, breach of trust and forg­ing a doc­u­ment. Due to an inci­dent on June 25, O’Brien also faces a charge of utter­ing threats to five fel­low Moun­ties in Yel­lowknife. O’Brien was arrested on that charge, but has since been released.

In Jan. 2009, $2,000 went miss­ing from an evi­dence locker in the Yel­lowknife detach­ment. The money was found the next day, although an inves­ti­ga­tion was still launched.

In May 2009, when the inves­ti­ga­tion uncov­ered crim­i­nal activ­ity, RCMP offi­cers from Edmon­ton took over. The inves­ti­ga­tion was com­pleted in March, although an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the mat­ter is ongoing.

O’Brien was sus­pended from the RCMP in Feb­ru­ary 2010. He had been an RCMP offi­cer for 21 years, 13 of them in the North­west Territories.

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

The Peo­ple
BYLINE: Fiona May

Ipswich, Suf­folk

A MASKED knife­man who repeat­edly raped a teenager 20 years ago has been nailed — by his son’s DNA.

Phil Collins, 50, believed he had escaped jus­tice after the ter­ri­fy­ing assault.

But one of his sons gave a DNA sam­ple after being arrested for shoplifting.

A cold-case review revealed the link to evi­dence left by Collins when he pounced on the 17-year-old girl in a park at Ipswich, Suf­folk, in 1990.

He was jailed for 10 years after being found guilty at Ipswich Crown Court of rape, inde­cent assault and another seri­ous offence.

The court heard that cleaner Collins, of Ipswich, forced his vic­tim to strip to her socks at knifepoint.

Det Chief Insp Rick Munns, of Suf­folk police, said: “This sends a mes­sage to any­one who thinks they have escaped jus­tice. With every advance in sci­ence it is only a mat­ter of time before they are arrested.”

Paul Hutchin­son, 51 — also trapped by his son’s DNA — was jailed last week for the 1983 sex mur­der of a girl, 16, in Not­ting­hamshire. It was the first case fea­tured on TV’s Crimewatch.

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