IAPE Evidence Blog

Omaha World-Herald
Link to Article

Omaha, NE

Never trust a rusty gun.

One Omaha police offi­cer learned that les­son ear­lier this month while check­ing a shot­gun into the evi­dence room at Cen­tral Police Head­quar­ters, 505 S. 15th St.

Offi­cer Dar­relle Bonam, a vet­eran of more than five years with the depart­ment, was book­ing the gun into evi­dence. While pulling back the rusty slide to check if it was empty, he touched the trig­ger and the gun went off, hit­ting a money-counting machine.

No one was injured in the inci­dent, which occurred Feb. 3.

Offi­cer Jacob Bet­tin, a police spokesman, said that any­time a firearm is dis­charged in a city build­ing, the mat­ter is reviewed by the Omaha Police Department’s safety review com­mit­tee to deter­mine whether proper pro­ce­dures and safety tech­niques were fol­lowed and whether dis­ci­pli­nary action is in order.

“This shows firearms are dan­ger­ous, even for peo­ple trained to prop­erly han­dle them,” Bet­tin said.

— Jason Kuiper

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

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Lit­tle Rock)
BYLINE: JACOB QUINN SANDERS ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

Ben­tonville, AR

EAST CAMDEN — A fired Ben­tonville Police Depart­ment evi­dence offi­cer and crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor lost her state-issued cer­ti­fi­ca­tion Thursday.

At a meet­ing here, the Arkansas Com­mis­sion on Law Enforce­ment Stan­dards and Train­ing deter­mined that Michelle Mar­garet Smith should be barred from work­ing as a police offi­cer in the state because of poorly orga­nized evi­dence belong­ing to 330 sep­a­rate cases in Ben­tonville and what her for­mer chief, James Allen, called “bizarre” behavior.

After the com­mis­sion handed down its deci­sion, Smith sat qui­etly and shook her head, look­ing stunned.

Smith’s attor­ney, William Put­man of Fayet­teville, argued that a mal­func­tion­ing com­puter sys­tem and a reac­tion to the com­bi­na­tion of a cer­tain antibi­otic med­ica­tion com­bined with doctor-prescribed steroid injec­tions caused both her dimin­ished job per­for­mance and what he called her “manic” emo­tional state.

When it came time for Smith to tes­tify, she described her love of crime scene work and said her prob­lems were behind her.

“I’m great,” she told the com­mis­sion. “I’m men­tally and phys­i­cally bet­ter.” Smith said the days when she would sweat through her clothes and the nights she would sweat through her sheets — all for no clear rea­son — were behind her.

Also gone were her vio­lent dreams.

Allen said of that time in Smith’s life: “It was just baf­fling to us what was occur­ring. It was not the same Michelle Smith we had known for years.” Allen hired Smith from the Jones­boro Police Depart­ment in 2005. She had worked there nearly seven years with no issues.

But in late 2008, after repeated expo­sure to methamphetamine-making chem­i­cals that required she get med­ical treat­ment, some­thing changed.

The evi­dence room began to fall into dis­ar­ray. After Smith’s per­sonal prob­lems wors­ened — her par­ents moved in with her for a time to help, she said — her super­vi­sors learned that she had stopped tak­ing evi­dence to the Arkansas Crime Lab­o­ra­tory in Lit­tle Rock. They found other evi­dence — 18 cases’ worth — in a taped-shut dehu­mid­i­fier box in the main prop­erty room. Smith also failed to sep­a­rate out drugs, guns and cash for stor­age in a more-secure room out­side the main police headquarters.

Allen said the chain of cus­tody was not com­pro­mised, so the mis­han­dled evi­dence ulti­mately did not jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases. But it took “hun­dreds of hours” to find that out, he said.

Ben­tonville police Lt. Jon Simp­son said Smith also failed to prop­erly store evi­dence she col­lected at crime scenes, includ­ing bul­let frag­ments from an officer-involved shooting.

Allen fired Smith on April 13.

At the hear­ing Thurs­day, Smith and her doc­tor, William McCol­lum, said they felt sure that the com­bi­na­tion of the antibi­otic Lev­aquin and steroid injec­tions to help her recover from methamphetamine-related chem­i­cal expo­sures were at the core of her prob­lems and would not be repeated.

McCol­lum said he saw no issues with Smith per­form­ing the duties nec­es­sary to be a police officer.

Smith said she would not seek a job in another prop­erty room if allowed to keep her cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, but she would like to work as a crime scene inves­ti­ga­tor again.

“I love crime scene [inves­ti­ga­tion],” she said.

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

www.montgomerycountynews.net
Link to Arti­cle
Two pho­tos
One video

BYLINE: Jamie Nash

Splen­dora, TX

Dis­cus­sion con­tin­ues regard­ing EMC injec­tion well
Bishop asks com­mu­nity to con­sider his record

SPLENDORA — For­mer Pct. 4 Con­sta­ble Travis Bishop, who lost that post to now Con­sta­ble Rowdy Hay­den in the 2008 Repub­li­can Pri­mary, is again hop­ing to win the con­fi­dence of East Mont­gomery County res­i­dents. But stand­ing on his rep­u­ta­tion in the com­mu­nity and point­ing to his past as a pub­lic offi­cial may instead dredge up some issues Bishop would be bet­ter off avoiding.

He is attempt­ing to push through an appli­ca­tion for a per­mit allow­ing him to deposit waste­water in an aban­doned injec­tion well that is draw­ing oppo­si­tion from the sur­round­ing community.

Bishop addressed the Splen­dora City Coun­cil last week regard­ing the well, which is off of Hay­den Road and he scoffed at the con­tention by some coun­cil mem­bers that a num­ber of area res­i­dents had already expressed their con­cerns not only regard­ing pos­si­ble sound and traf­fic pol­lu­tion, but pos­si­ble con­t­a­m­i­na­tion because of the well’s prox­im­ity to the City of Splendora’s water supply.

Per­haps, Bishop was unaware that a simul­ta­ne­ous meet­ing was occur­ring a few miles away regard­ing the same issue. The Con­cerned Cit­i­zens of Mont­gomery County were in dis­cus­sions with Pct. 4 Com­mis­sioner Ed Rine­hart, who has offered to pro­vide a bus for area res­i­dents to travel to Austin on Thurs­day to express their oppo­si­tion to Bishop’s plan to the Rail­road Commission.

Splen­dora City Coun­cil was try­ing to decide whether they should send a let­ter to the com­mis­sion regard­ing their con­cerns. But a cler­i­cal over­sight pre­vented them from legally going into closed ses­sion to dis­cuss the mat­ter with the city attor­ney. After much dis­cus­sion and debate they voted to table the mat­ter and sched­ule a spe­cial meet­ing tonight at 6:30, when they will have the option of going into closed session.

Old and improp­erly stored chem­i­cals removed by haz­mat crew from the EMC Annex

Mayor Dorothy Welch was vis­i­bly frus­trated with the council’s inac­tion. She per­son­ally asked Bishop a bar­rage of ques­tions, some of which he could not, or did not answer.

The long time politi­cian repeat­edly tried to shift the council’s focus away from the poten­tial water con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and noise pol­lu­tion issues, first sug­gest­ing that they con­sider the tax ben­e­fits the city would reap.

“What we pro­pose to do for the com­mu­nity here is just bring in a lit­tle rev­enue,” he said.

Then a cit­i­zen pointed out that the well is not Splen­dora City lim­its, but is of legal con­cern to the city and its res­i­dents only because of the dan­ger it poses to the water supply.

As ques­tions regard­ing spe­cific details of use of the injec­tion well per­sisted, Bishop per­sisted in telling coun­cil why he should be trusted.

Accord­ing to Bishop, he helped build the city of Splen­dora and kept it going.

The City Coun­cil should be most con­cerned that the well has “pro­fes­sional peo­ple look­ing after it, and respon­si­ble own­er­ship,” he said.

But that raises another big question — trust.

DO res­i­dents trust Travis Bishop? CAN res­i­dents trust Travis Bishop?

Bishop says ‘yes.’ He told coun­cil he did not want to see lia­bil­ity in any direction.

“If there was a risk here, I assure you, I would not be look­ing into this,” Bishop said.

Unfor­tu­nately for Bishop, some feel his cred­i­bil­ity regard­ing tak­ing risks has been dam­aged more than once by infor­ma­tion that sur­faced unex­pect­edly, and the most recent episode was less than a year ago and involved haz­ardous materials.

When Pct. 4 Con­sta­ble Rowdy Hay­den took the reins in Jan­u­ary, he and his men found an unex­pected dan­ger in the evi­dence room used by Bishop’s admin­is­tra­tion for the pre­vi­ous 20 years.

A haz­mat team com­prised of mem­bers of the US Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion and the Mont­gomery County Sheriff’s Office Spe­cial Inves­ti­ga­tions Unit removed dan­ger­ous chem­i­cals used in the pro­duc­tion of metham­phet­a­mine, some with labels indi­cat­ing they were con­fis­cated in the year 2000.

MCSO Lt. Philip Cash, who heads up the SIU, said both bases and acids were found in a safe inside the prop­erty room, and had been there so long that some of the mate­ri­als had eaten through paper and card­board and begun to rust the inside of the safe.

If mixed, the two would have a “very vio­lent” reac­tion, Cash said.

The chem­i­cals were stored in a room adja­cent to the office that until recently was occu­pied by Precinct 4 Jus­tice of the Peace James Metts, and in the same build­ing as the Pct. 4 court­room and offices, as well as satel­lite offices for the MCSO and the Texas Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safety.

“If there was a risk here, I assure you, I would not be look­ing into this,” Bishop said.

Of course, the mean­ing of “risk” is rel­a­tive, and some believe there is video­taped proof that Bishop risked the health of his own rel­a­tives to make a buck after a diesel spill on US 59 in 2007.

Hous­ton tele­vi­sion sta­tion KHOU, Chan­nel 11, aired footage of a haz­mat cleanup on US 59 that was allegedly con­tracted by then Con­sta­ble Travis Bishop, while on duty. But the more dis­turb­ing issue for most was that fire­fight­ers wore pro­tec­tive gear while try­ing to con­tain the spill, but Bishop’s crew, which included his own chil­dren, wore casual street clothes. A cou­ple of them wore hard hats, but one wore a cow­boy hat. No breath­ing appa­ra­tuses or gloves were seen in the video and at one point, a young female appears to be shak­ing off some of the liq­uid after push­ing an absorbent pad too far down into it the spill with her bare hand.
The 2007 clip shown by Chan­nel 11 was only part of the footage cap­tured, which can be seen by click­ing the arrow below. (Flash Player required)

Another “explo­sive” sit­u­a­tion occurred in 2000, when Bishop was accused of assault­ing a young man after a con­fronta­tion over how he was dri­ving through Bishop’s “Wild Coun­try Trailer Park.” A grand jury was already hear­ing that case when it was dropped.

Those who have lived in EMC for over ten years prob­a­bly recall an inci­dent halfway through Bishop’s tenure as Con­sta­ble that was in direct con­trast to the volatile chem­i­cals that should have been removed years earlier.

In 1998, an Asso­ci­ated Press arti­cle about Bishop appeared in news­pa­pers far beyond Mont­gomery County after over $1 mil­lion in cocaine dis­ap­peared from his evi­dence room. The arti­cle said a grand jury “issued a scathing report” regard­ing then Con­sta­ble Travis Bishop, say­ing that while there was insuf­fi­cient evi­dence to sup­port an indict­ment, Bishop was guilty of “at best sloppy or inept admin­is­tra­tion.” The drugs never reap­peared and in at least one arti­cle, Bishop said he assumed some­one “picked the lock.”

“If there was a risk here, I assure you, I would not be look­ing into this,” Bishop said.

Accord­ing to the 1998 AP arti­cle, “The grand jury said it was shocked at the lack of pro­ce­dures con­trols, safe­guards and pre­cau­tions in place.”

In today’s Com­mis­sion­ers Court, Rine­hart will dis­cuss Bishop’s inten­tions with other com­mis­sion­ers. No action can be taken today; how­ever, Rine­hart said he believed it was impor­tant that every­one be apprised of the situation.

The com­mis­sioner pre­vi­ously said he was con­cerned with how lit­tle notice com­pa­nies are required to give area res­i­dents prior to secur­ing a per­mit such as this. He has vowed to do what­ever he can to sup­port his con­stituents in address­ing the injec­tion well issue.

“Not every­body you like to see with a pis­tol,” Bishop said in the recent Splen­dora City Coun­cil Meeting.

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