IAPE Evidence Blog

Chicago Tri­bune, chicagotribune.com
BYLINE: Steve Schmadeke, Tri­bune reporter
Link to Article

Will County, IL

Miss­ing drugs could hurt pros­e­cu­tions, experts say 

A large amount of heroin has been stolen from a ship­ping con­tainer that Will County sheriff’s police were using to store evi­dence, police sources say, poten­tially deal­ing a set­back to pros­e­cu­tions, along with the county’s efforts to stem surg­ing heroin use.

One source said four indi­vid­u­ally wrapped kilos of heroin, poten­tially worth $500,000 or more, were stolen from the con­tainer, which was left out­side a sheriff’s sub­sta­tion and secured with a pad­lock. Other sources could not con­firm the amount.

Mar­i­juana and some small items, includ­ing a saw and a bow-and-arrow set, were also stolen.

The con­tainer was stored on a fenced lot near Lar­away Road in unin­cor­po­rated Joliet, where police keep impounded vehicles.

The thefts are another black eye for the department’s evidence-handling pro­ce­dures. Last year details emerged about shoes belong­ing to Scott Eby, who pleaded guilty in Novem­ber to the 2004 slay­ing of 3-year-old Riley Fox, found near the Wilm­ing­ton creek where her body was dumped. The prison-issued shoes had his name writ­ten inside them, but the evi­dence was over­looked for years.

Experts said valu­able evi­dence like nar­cotics, cash or jew­elry is typ­i­cally stored in a much more secure area, some­times in a locked space inside a dead-bolted evi­dence room.

Will County sheriff’s police do have an evi­dence stor­age area at the sub­sta­tion, sources said, so it’s unclear why the con­tainer was used and why such valu­able items were stored out­side. Sheriff’s spokesman Ken Kau­pas did not return calls seek­ing comment.

Who­ever broke in appar­ently slipped through a gap in the fence and cut the lock off, said depart­ment spokes­woman Kathy Hoffmeyer, cit­ing a police report. The report only lists a con­crete saw and a bow-and-arrow set as miss­ing, said Hoffmeyer, not­ing that an inven­tory was being taken.

Hoffmeyer said she was unaware of the drug thefts when con­tacted by the Tribune.

The break-in was dis­cov­ered Oct. 14, she said. It’s unclear when the con­tainer was last entered by police. There is a video cam­era at the site.

A spokesman for the Will County state’s attorney’s office declined to comment.

County author­i­ties are work­ing to con­tain what they’ve described as a heroin epi­demic, with the num­ber of heroin over­dose deaths in Will County ris­ing from to 26 last year from five in 2000. So far this year there have been 22 fatal heroin over­doses, accord­ing to the county coroner’s office.

Legal experts said the thefts could tor­pedo any nar­cotics cases based on the stolen drugs, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of drug con­spir­acy or solic­i­ta­tion charges, even if the miss­ing evi­dence had already been tested by the state crime lab.

“In cases where these drugs were the basis for the charge, boy I think the state’s out of luck,” said Loy­ola Uni­ver­sity law pro­fes­sor Jamie Carey, who has writ­ten a book on court­room evi­dence. “If they don’t have the con­tra­band itself, I feel that they’re not going to be able to proceed.”

Ronald Smith, a John Mar­shall Law School pro­fes­sor, agreed, say­ing defen­dants have a right to do their own test­ing of any alleged narcotics.

“Unless pros­e­cu­tors can bring that stuff into the court­room, they don’t have a case,” he said.

sschmadeke@tribune.com

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

Horvitz News­pa­pers, Penin­sula Daily News,peninsuladailynews.com
BYLINE: Arwyn Rice
Link to Article

Clal­lam County, WA

Staci Alli­son, left, sits in Clal­lam County Supe­rior Court on Tues­day. – Photo by Chris Tucker/Peninsula Daily News

PORT ANGELES — The trial of a woman accused of theft from the Clal­lam County Sheriff’s Office evi­dence room began Tues­day with sug­ges­tions from com­pet­ing attor­neys of greed, office infight­ing, a lack of super­vi­sory over­sight and sup­port — and a clut­tered, con­fus­ing evi­dence room.

Staci L. Alli­son, a for­mer evi­dence tech­ni­cian who now lives in Mon­te­sano, was charged with first-degree theft and money laun­der­ing in the dis­ap­pear­ance of more than $9,500, accord­ing to Assis­tant State Attor­ney Gen­eral Scott Mar­low dur­ing his open­ing state­ment Tuesday.

“The theme here, unfor­tu­nately, is one of greed, rec­og­niz­ing a weak­ness and tak­ing advan­tage of that weak­ness,” Mar­low said in his open­ing statement.

Pre­vi­ous reports said Alli­son was accused of steal­ing $8,644 from the sheriff’s evi­dence room.

As much as $51,251 in cash was found miss­ing from the evi­dence room in Novem­ber 2006.

Alli­son was charged with the lesser amount because that’s what pros­e­cu­tors believed they could prove she took.

Today’s tes­ti­mony from pros­e­cu­tion wit­nesses will begin at 9 a.m. in Supe­rior Court at the Clal­lam County Courthouse.

Alli­son was the evi­dence offi­cer for the Sheriff’s Office from 2003 through 2006 and was in charge of log­ging in, main­tain­ing and return­ing or destroy­ing evi­dence col­lected in crim­i­nal cases by sheriff’s deputies and detectives.

Novem­ber snowstorm

The case began in Nov. 27, 2006, when a snow­storm trapped Alli­son at home, and her super­vi­sor dis­cov­ered a bin full of empty or par­tially emp­tied cash evi­dence envelopes near Allison’s desk, Mar­low said.

The dis­cov­ery trig­gered an inves­ti­ga­tion by the State Police and led to Alli­son, who was one of only three peo­ple who had both a key and the secu­rity code to the evi­dence room, he said.

The focus of the pros­e­cu­tion will be on Allison’s actions in delet­ing com­puter records the day before a state audit of the evi­dence room, bank records that show unex­plained cash deposits and pay­day loan records, Mar­low told the jury.

The defense told a dif­fer­ent story.

Man­age­ment ‘a mess’

“The whole man­age­ment [of the sheriff’s depart­ment] was a mess,” in 2006, though it was improved from an ear­lier admin­is­tra­tion, said defense attor­ney Ralph W. Ander­son of Port Angeles.

“There were rival­ries. Sides were picked,” Ander­son said.

Allison’s super­vi­sor even kept a detailed list of Allison’s fail­ings, Ander­son said.

“She did her job, though there were those who were out to get her,” he said.

Ander­son told the jury that Allison’s big gap in pay­day loans came dur­ing a time when Alli­son couldn’t get new loans because of unpaid loans.

As for the com­puter sys­tem, it didn’t work right, and Alli­son was try­ing to delete and re-enter data in an attempt to get it to work, Ander­son said.

For­mer Sher­iff Joe Mar­tin lost his re-election bid to the present sher­iff, Bill Bene­dict, in Novem­ber 2006.

Three wit­nesses, each a mem­ber of the Clal­lam County Sheriff’s Depart­ment, took the stand Tuesday.

Direct super­vi­sor

Office Admin­is­tra­tive Coor­di­na­tor Chris James was Allison’s direct super­vi­sor in 2006.

James tes­ti­fied that she had been work­ing with Alli­son to resolve prob­lems with evi­dence room orga­ni­za­tion for six months, try­ing to clear up severe clut­ter that blocked the office’s safe.

Ander­son asked James if it would have been sim­pler to just go in and clean the room.

“I didn’t want to micro-manage,” James said.

James said she pre­ferred to help Alli­son resolve the prob­lem her­self, but Nov. 27, when the snow­storm trapped Alli­son at home and James in the office, she took the time to clear Allison’s per­sonal items from evi­dence shelves, to be replaced with evi­dence on the floor in front of the safe.

“The evi­dence room is for evi­dence,” she said.

The order for per­sonal items to be removed from the room came from Chief Admin­is­tra­tive Deputy Alice Hoffman.

Blue bin

Dur­ing the process, James found a blue Rub­ber­maid bin full of cash evi­dence envelopes, she said.

She imme­di­ately informed Hoff­man, who told her to find out why the cash evi­dence was not in the safe, she said.

Ander­son asked if she had noticed the bin earlier.

James said no, she had not noticed it before that day.

Ander­son also ques­tioned James about a long, detailed list of Allison’s “short­com­ings,” includ­ing the report of a per­sonal phone call while on duty.

That list was never entered into Allison’s per­son­nel file, which meant she had shown improve­ment on those items, James said.

List com­mon practice

Hoff­man tes­ti­fied that the list was com­mon prac­tice, that super­vi­sors were expected to doc­u­ment prob­lems for weekly meetings.

Hoff­man said no one could have entered the evi­dence room with­out the key and a code.

Chief Crim­i­nal Deputy Ron Cameron tes­ti­fied on the state of the evi­dence room that morn­ing and how it was dis­cov­ered that money was missing.

He said he had gone to the evi­dence room to get a key, but it was not where it belonged.

After a search in which James became “ani­mated” over the con­di­tion of the evi­dence room, James pulled out a blue bin and showed him the con­tents, Cameron said.

When James pulled an enve­lope out of the bin, some change fell out, which should be impos­si­ble for a sealed piece of evi­dence, Cameron testified.

Oth­ers were found to be opened, and the area was declared a crime scene, Cameron said.

Cameron took the keys of the two key­hold­ers in the office, had the elec­tronic alarm code changed and began the inves­ti­ga­tion, he said.

On cross-examination by Ander­son, Cameron said that in the past six months, he had been in the evi­dence room a few times and had not seen the blue bin before that day.

“So you can’t say how long those envelopes had been that way,” Ander­son asked.

“No,” Cameron replied.

________

Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360 – 417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.

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

The Colum­bia Daily Tri­bune, columbiatribune.com
BYLINE: Jodie Jack­son Jr.
Link to Article

Howard County, Fayette, MO

Howard County’s finances are in “poor” con­di­tion, accord­ing to a state audit that flags a vari­ety of money-handling issues and prac­tices that are poten­tial vio­la­tions of state law.

Among the find­ings in the report Audi­tor Tom Schwe­ich issued yes­ter­day was the dis­cov­ery of an enve­lope of seized cash — total­ing $3,500 for one case — on a shelf in the unse­cured evi­dence room at the sheriff’s office. The cash was seized in August 2010 and was noted by audi­tors on March 31, 2011.

The audit also noted pro­ce­dures in the offices of the county clerk, col­lec­tor and pub­lic admin­is­tra­tor. It gave Howard County the low­est pos­si­ble rat­ing, indi­cat­ing that the county needs to “sig­nif­i­cantly improve oper­a­tions” and that prior audit rec­om­men­da­tions have not been followed.

Howard County Pre­sid­ing Com­mis­sioner Low­ell Eaton said this morn­ing he was dis­ap­pointed that the county did not receive at least a “fair” rat­ing and that com­mis­sion­ers did not have a chance to see the audit before it was made public.

“In the past, we have had a week” to review the audit “before they put it out,” Eaton said, explain­ing that he hadn’t seen the report until this morn­ing. “It would have been nice to get a look at it before they start telling how poorly we han­dle things.”

Eaton, the county’s pre­sid­ing com­mis­sioner since 2003, said the report does not credit offi­cials for being “pretty fru­gal” to avoid deficit spend­ing or for meet­ing some prior recommendations.

“We knew we had some con­cerns. I was sur­prised it wasn’t a ‘fair’ rat­ing,” he said, not­ing that some of the new find­ings “can be fixed pretty quick.”

But the audit found wide­spread book­keep­ing and record-keeping prob­lems, includ­ing some that have per­sisted for years.

For exam­ple, the sheriff’s office in Fayette has not per­formed bank rec­on­cil­i­a­tions for five years, the report said. The audit also was crit­i­cal of the absence of record-keeping and timely deposits per­tain­ing to the pur­chase and sale of phone cards to inmates.

“We have repeat­edly iden­ti­fied weak­nesses in the sheriff’s con­trols and pro­ce­dures, but improve­ments still have not been made,” the audit report stated.

Sher­iff Char­lie Pol­son did not return a Tri­bune phone call request­ing com­ment this morning.

In a response to audi­tors included in the report, the sheriff’s book­keeper said she was “too busy to per­form bank rec­on­cil­i­a­tions” because of other office duties, includ­ing her roles as jailer, dis­patcher and pris­oner trans­port guard. The sheriff’s response said an intern attempted to rec­on­cile the accounts in 2009, but the report con­cluded the rec­on­cil­i­a­tions were inaccurate.

The sheriff’s response to audi­tors said record-keeping improve­ments will be made and that seized cash will be kept in a bank safe-deposit box.

“We are doing the best job we can in review­ing and doc­u­ment­ing the review of records given the amount of man­power avail­able,” it said.

The county com­mis­sion didn’t escape crit­i­cism from the audi­tors, who pointed out declin­ing gen­eral rev­enue cash bal­ances result­ing from fund trans­fers to off­set expenses in other funds. Howard County ended 2010 with a bal­ance of $82 in gen­eral rev­enue. The audit pointed out that the com­mis­sion also autho­rized pay­ing some expenses from restricted funds, which was “not in accor­dance with state law.”

Audi­tors plan to review the county again within 90 days and could for­ward any remain­ing con­cerns to the attor­ney general.

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