IAPE Evidence Blog

The Ari­zona Repub­lic, azcentral.com
BYLINE: D.S. Wood­fill, The Ari­zona Repub­lic
Link to Article

Sur­prise, AZ

Two inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions in the Sur­prise Police Depart­ment have gone into a sec­ond year hav­ing no clear end in sight.

One case, involv­ing for­mer Assis­tant Chief Scott Con­nelly and an uniden­ti­fied employee, started in June. Offi­cials said they hope to wrap it up by the end of the year, but it could take longer if the other employee appeals any dis­ci­pline that may be meted out.

The other case con­cerns $33,000 in drug money stolen from a depart­ment evi­dence locker in Sep­tem­ber 2010. Police had con­fis­cated the cash in two drug inves­ti­ga­tions — one in March 2008 and the other in Feb­ru­ary 2009. Police said they have been wait­ing for a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion by the Phoenix Police Depart­ment to end before begin­ning an internal-affairs inves­ti­ga­tion inter­views in earnest.

The Repub­lic has sought pub­lic records in the miss­ing money and Con­nelly cases.

MISSING DRUG MONEY

The Repub­lic learned in March that $33,000 in drug money had gone miss­ing from a police evi­dence locker six months ear­lier. The Police Depart­ment — headed at the time by interim Chief Mark Schott — didn’t pub­licly dis­close the theft, but reported it to the Phoenix Police Depart­ment, which began a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion. That inves­ti­ga­tion has is now in its sec­ond year.

Sur­prise Chief Mike Fra­zier, who took over for Schott in Feb­ru­ary, told The Repub­lic in March that the money was seized by police from sus­pected drug dealers.

The theft sparked out­rage from the new chief, who said he was “gravely con­cerned” about the miss­ing money and the fact that the depart­ment may still have a thief in its midst.

In addi­tion to the inter­nal inquiry and crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, Fra­zier ordered an over­haul of secu­rity pro­ce­dures, which were crit­i­cized by at least one employee from the evi­dence depart­ment, accord­ing to Phoenix police doc­u­ments. Frazier’s reforms included stricter lim­its on employee-access to the evi­dence room and addi­tional video cam­eras to cover blind spots.

Where the inves­ti­ga­tion stands:

Sur­prise offi­cials orig­i­nally said the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion could last sev­eral weeks to a few months. How­ever, the review has no clear end in sight.

On Tues­day, Sur­prise Police Com­man­der Terry Young said inves­ti­ga­tors still do not have any sus­pects. He said it’s pos­si­ble that the cul­prit or cul­prits are no longer employed at the department.

Young was non­com­mit­tal when asked if he is con­fi­dent inves­ti­ga­tors will dis­cover who stole the money.

“That’s cer­tainly my goal,” he said. “Obvi­ously, there’s no guarantee.”

Young said he had been wait­ing for the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion to reach a point where he could start inter­view­ing employ­ees for the inter­nal inquiry. That process has started, he said.

“As a mat­ter of pro­to­col, we let the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion unfold first,” he said. “We don’t want to inter­fere with or step on the toes of that crim­i­nal investigation.”

Young said fed­eral law also pro­tects gov­ern­ment employ­ees from being com­pelled to pro­vide poten­tially self-incriminating infor­ma­tion to employ­ers dur­ing a crim­i­nal investigation.

“For exam­ple, if I talk to an employee on an admin­is­tra­tive mat­ter, I have the right as the employer to com­pel them to answer my ques­tions,” he said. “But crim­i­nally, obvi­ously, you have the Fifth Amend­ment right to remain silent.

“So, we take a lot of pre­cau­tions to make sure that we’re not speak­ing to peo­ple who might ulti­mately be inter­viewed crim­i­nally. You can start kind of cloud­ing that line for them as to when they have to talk, when they don’t and are they pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion that they should be pro­tected from,” he said.

Young said the depart­ment began inter­view­ing peo­ple because the crim­i­nal case is wind­ing down. Still, the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion can­not con­clude until they have all the infor­ma­tion from the crim­i­nal investigation.

What’s Next:

Theron Quaas, the lead Phoenix detec­tive inves­ti­gat­ing the theft, didn’t respond to requests for an interview.

When asked if the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion could take another year, Young said, “It should not take any­where close to another year.”

Young said the inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion should end within 120 days after the crim­i­nal case is closed.

What oth­ers have said:

Coun­cil­man John Williams said the coun­cil has no role track­ing the inves­ti­ga­tions of the miss­ing money or in the inquiry involv­ing Con­nelly and declined to com­ment. He said it’s not appro­pri­ate for the coun­cil to get involved in mat­ters that aren’t policy-related unless pub­lic trust is at stake.

Still, Williams said he would request an update from the city man­ager, say­ing his inter­est was piqued, but “I don’t plan on run­ning any inter­fer­ence or insert­ing myself.”

Pierce Mur­phy, a board mem­ber of the Idaho-based National Asso­ci­a­tion for Civil­ian Over­sight of Law Enforce­ment, said there’s no set time for how long an inves­ti­ga­tion should last if it’s con­nected to crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing. Such cases can be more com­plex than admin­is­tra­tive inquiries over pol­icy violations.

Mur­phy is also the Boise Police Department’s ombuds­man, in charge of inves­ti­gat­ing pub­lic com­plaints and audit­ing internal-affairs investigations.

Mur­phy, who was unfa­mil­iar with the details of the Sur­prise case, said a year could be rea­son­able for an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion that is part of a crim­i­nal case.

He said, for exam­ple, a case could be con­nected to a fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tion, drug car­tel or because police are inves­ti­gat­ing wider cor­rup­tion that was uncov­ered by the orig­i­nal crime.

SCOTT CONNELLY

Con­nelly resigned Aug. 15 after being demoted from assis­tant police chief to sergeant in Jan­u­ary. Offi­cials said the demo­tion, which took effect imme­di­ately after it was announced, was voluntary.

The Repub­lic filed two public-records requests seek­ing infor­ma­tion from Connelly’s per­son­nel file — one after his demo­tion and another shortly before his resignation.

City Attor­ney Michael Bai­ley declined both requests, stat­ing in a let­ter dated Feb. 14 that state law lim­its pub­lic access to gov­ern­ment records if the doc­u­ments are con­fi­den­tial by statute, involves pri­vacy inter­ests or when dis­clo­sure is detri­men­tal to the state.

He did not say on which of those grounds offi­cials denied the request.

In his sec­ond denial let­ter dated Aug. 9, Bai­ley said the requested infor­ma­tion was the basis of a pend­ing inves­ti­ga­tion and state statute pro­hib­ited its release.

Nei­ther depart­ment offi­cials nor Con­nelly has dis­closed the nature of the inves­ti­ga­tion.
Where the inves­ti­ga­tion stands

Com­man­der Terry Young, who over­sees the department’s Pro­fes­sional Stan­dards Unit, would not share details on the case. He said it involves another unnamed employee who is cur­rently the sub­ject of an inves­ti­ga­tion in the same mat­ter. Police have long said they don’t com­ment on inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tions and are pro­hib­ited by state law from dis­clos­ing infor­ma­tion to the pub­lic on ongo­ing inter­nal investigations.

Offi­cials have said it does not include any sus­pected crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing.
What’s next?

Young said he hopes to con­clude the inves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing the other employee by year’s end.

When asked why the case requires that much time, Young said that it had been stalled by an “employee issue.” Young added he hasn’t been able to con­clude the inter­view por­tion of the investigation.

“As soon as I’m able to do so, then we can put that one to bed and be done with it,” he said.

Opin­ions on case vary

Six months is too long for most non-criminal inves­ti­ga­tions, said Pierce Mur­phy, a board mem­ber and past pres­i­dent of the Idaho-based National Asso­ci­a­tion for Civil­ian Over­sight of Law Enforcement. .

Mur­phy said inves­ti­ga­tions not involv­ing crim­i­nal acts should take only 60 to 90 days.

The rea­sons are myr­iad, he said. It’s unfair to allow offi­cers with careers and rep­u­ta­tions on the line to remain in limbo, he said.

Mur­phy added that if an officer’s bad behav­ior or mis­takes aren’t rec­ti­fied quickly, man­agers lose the oppor­tu­nity to cor­rect long-term behavior.

“If you’re talk­ing 180 to 365 days or more, I’m not sure you’re accom­plish­ing that goal,” he said. “The teach­able moment’s gone.”

Lengthy inves­ti­ga­tions also send the wrong mes­sage to other offi­cers, Mur­phy said. If employ­ees know bad behav­ior won’t be cor­rected swiftly, it lessens the con­cern they will be disciplined.

Mer­rick Bobb exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Police Assess­ment Resource Cen­ter, a Los Ange­les police watch­dog orga­ni­za­tion, said six months is the max­i­mum for less com­plex cases. He cited U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice guidelines.

How­ever, depart­ments should strive to con­clude them as quickly as pos­si­ble, he said.

Tim Dorn, pres­i­dent of the Ari­zona Asso­ci­a­tion of Chiefs of Police, said in an e-mail that the length of time an inves­ti­ga­tion should take “is based totally on the extent and nature of the investigation.”

But Dorn said a recently enacted law requires inves­ti­ga­tions to com­pleted within 120 days, but it does not apply to inves­ti­ga­tions that were started prior to the law’s adoption.

“There are exemp­tions for inves­ti­ga­tions which also involve a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, or where it can be clearly demon­strated that addi­tional time is nec­es­sary to com­plete the inves­ti­ga­tion,” he said.

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

The Ore­gon­ian, oregonlive.com
BYLINE: Jeff Man­ning, The Ore­gon­ian
Link to Article

Polk County, OR

Philip Scott Can­non, left, walks arm in arm with his son, Math­ias, 20, after being released from the Polk County Jail, Dal­las, Ore., on Fri­day, Dec. 18, 2009. His con­vic­tion on a triple homi­cide was over­turned because of doubts about the valid­ity of key foren­sic evi­dence. The Asso­ci­ated Press

Attor­ney Gen­eral John Kroger has asked the Ore­gon State Police to inves­ti­gate mis­han­dling of evi­dence at the Jus­tice Depart­ment after four boxes of believed lost evi­dence from a noto­ri­ous 1998 triple mur­der were found.

Philip Scott Can­non was con­victed in 1999 and sen­tenced to life in prison for the mur­der of a man and two women in rural Polk County. He spent a decade in prison before win­ning his release in 2009 due to the lost and dis­cred­ited evidence.

The Can­non evi­dence was found in the offices of the Jus­tice Department’s trial divi­sion, which has sep­a­rate quar­ters from the Attor­ney Gen­eral, said Tony Green a Jus­tice Depart­ment spokesman. Rather than attempt an inter­nal probe, Kroger decided to put it in the hands of the state police.

“We found some records that were believed to be destroyed,” Green said. “There will be ques­tions as to how the records got there.”

Kroger said in a state­ment that he’s also ordered a com­plete review of evi­dence pro­ce­dures at the department’s trial divi­sion. “Mis­han­dling of evi­dence is com­pletely unac­cept­able,” Kroger said. “As Attor­ney Gen­eral, I take full responsibility.”

The sud­den appear­ance of the Can­non files marks the sec­ond embar­rass­ing evi­dence foul-up at the Jus­tice Depart­ment in five months. Kroger put Sean Rid­dell, for­mer head of the department’s crim­i­nal jus­tice divi­sion, on tem­po­rary leave last spring after it was deter­mined he deleted e-mails that related to the department’s probe into the Ore­gon Energy Depart­ment and its con­tract with Cylvia Hayes.

Riddell’s destruc­tion of e-mails from the case was inad­ver­tent, the depart­ment said. He has since returned to the Jus­tice Depart­ment in a less senior role.

In 1998, Can­non was a plumber sent to repair a water leak at rural Polk County mobile home occu­pied by Jason Kinser. A neigh­bor later found Kinser and two oth­ers, Suzan Renee Osborne and Celesta Graves, dead or dying of bul­let wounds.

Can­non main­tained his inno­cence, claim­ing the three were alive when he left. Kinser was a meth dealer, Can­non claimed in court fil­ings, who had earned plenty of ene­mies among com­pet­ing dealers.

But Can­non was con­victed and his appeals denied.

Can­non con­tin­ued to fight. In 2005, he filed a peti­tion for post-conviction relief in which he argued that he didn’t get ade­quate legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Specif­i­cally, Can­non claimed his for­mer attor­ney failed to chal­lenge the bal­lis­tics evi­dence pro­vided at trial by the prosecution.

Polk County pros­e­cu­tors relied heav­ily on a kind of bal­lis­tics evi­dence known as “bul­let lead analy­sis.” The FBI and other law enforce­ment agen­cies stopped rely­ing on the tech­nique last decade after new research showed that it was unre­li­able. But even dur­ing Cannon’s first trial, bul­let lead analy­sis was known to be flawed, he argued.

Can­non also alleged that both Polk County pros­e­cu­tors hid and destroyed evi­dence and that Jus­tice Depart­ment attor­neys cov­ered up the fact that evi­dence had gone missing.

In a sub­se­quent civil law­suit filed in 2010, Can­non claimed that state lawyers stalled the case for years try­ing, among other things, to con­vince Can­non to give up his right to seek mon­e­tary dam­ages in the event he was released. “For the next five and one-half years, (for­mer assis­tant Attor­ney Gen­eral Susan) Ger­ber know­ingly delayed the judi­cial process…engaging in delay tac­tics, numer­ous post­pone­ments, and fail­ing to dis­close the loss and/ordestruction of evi­dence,” Can­non claimed in his law­suit, which was later dismissed.

In 2009, the Jus­tice Depart­ment agreed to grant Can­non a new trial. The case was returned to Polk County for pos­si­ble re-prosecution, but this time with­out the dis­cred­ited bal­lis­tics data. But there was a prob­lem. The miss­ing boxes of evidence.

State and county pros­e­cu­tors decided jointly to drop the charges against Can­non with­out prej­u­dice, mean­ing they can refile charges. Green said the Jus­tice Depart­ment will defer that deci­sion to their local coun­ter­parts. Polk County Dis­trict Attor­ney Stan But­ter­field could not be reached for comment.

In Decem­ber 2009, Can­non was released from the Polk County jail after 10 years behind bars. 

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

ABC15 (KNXV-TV), abc15.com
BYLINE: Corey Rangel
Link to Arti­cle
One Video
Pinal County, AZ

An inde­pen­dent audit raises some alarm­ing con­cerns within the Pinal County Sheriff’s Prop­erty and Evi­dence Unit which, accord­ing to the report, could have an impact on past, present, and future cases.

Even Sher­iff Paul Babeu admits there are some problems.

“The poten­tial lia­bil­ity here is grave. We have some seri­ous issues here and we don’t want to con­ceal it from you and we’re address­ing it in quick speed,” Babeu told ABC15.

The audit, done by California-based Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc., high­lights prob­lems with the way evi­dence is or has been han­dled, processed, and stored.

The report raises sev­eral spe­cific issues regard­ing how evi­dence is mon­i­tored and tracked and states “there could be a sub­stan­tial num­ber of items miss­ing but it will never be deter­mined unless some­one is look­ing for a spe­cific item and it can­not be found.”

At the time of the audit, there were more than 200 items in the “Unable To Locate” file includ­ing guns, drugs, money, and bio­log­i­cal evi­dence. The last time the file was exam­ined by a super­vi­sor was August 2010, the report found.

ECS made the rec­om­men­da­tion that man­age­ment should review the cur­rent miss­ing items and deter­mine if any of them “should require an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion, fur­ther search, or crim­i­nal investigation.”

The audit found sev­eral glar­ing prob­lems at stor­age facil­i­ties where evi­dence is being kept.

When audi­tors vis­ited a long-term stor­age facil­ity in Flo­rence that typ­i­cally holds evi­dence in older cases, the report noted, “Accord­ing to Prop­erty and Evi­dence Unit per­son­nel, the facil­ity has been bro­ken into on a num­ber of occa­sions which could jeop­ar­dize the evi­dence in court pro­ceed­ings. Sec­ondly, it is believed that there could be old homi­cide evi­dence still being stored in the building.”

While audi­tors esti­mated 90 per­cent of the items at the facil­ity could be purged, it rec­om­mended “all efforts be made to aban­don this facil­ity as quickly as pos­si­ble. In the event that there is another break-in and crit­i­cal evi­dence is stolen, the depart­ment will be cri­tiqued by the com­mu­nity and crit­i­cized by the newspaper.”

At a stor­age area in Casa Grande, ECS found other poten­tial prob­lems that could have an impact on cases not­ing: “It is a very good like­li­hood that deputies are enter­ing the room that has non-secured evi­dence that could eas­ily be removed or tam­pered with or chal­lenged in court.”

Accord­ing to the audit, the evi­dence area is in an old jail cell and “there is no record of who is enter­ing the cell to the un-secured evidence.”

The audit notes the cell vio­lates all accepted stan­dards and prac­tices and states, “It is obvi­ous the first line super­vi­sors assigned to this sta­tion are not con­cerned with evi­dence secu­rity of the chain of cus­tody. All that a defense attor­ney would have to ask is “could some­one have tam­pered with this evidence.”

“Cases could be com­pro­mised and that’s a prob­lem. We’re not in the busi­ness of being the prob­lem in a case with the evi­dence not being prop­erly han­dled, safe­guarded or processed,” said Babeu.

The 300-page report finds other poten­tial causes for con­cern regard­ing how evi­dence is doc­u­mented and tracked.

“At the present time if an inves­ti­gat­ing deputy/case offi­cer signs out evi­dence for inves­tiga­tive pur­poses he/she has no require­ment to return the evi­dence. The evi­dence can in fact stay in the pos­ses­sion of the deputy indef­i­nitely,” accord­ing to the audit.

It went on to note, “Many law enforce­ment agen­cies have had scan­dals or lost crim­i­nal cases wherein the investigators/case deputies have signed out evi­dence ‘for inves­tiga­tive pur­poses’ and the evi­dence has either never been returned or the evi­dence was sub­sti­tuted in the pack­age returned.”

Sim­i­larly, it also found, “Any time a Deputy of inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cers signs out an item of evi­dence for ‘inves­tiga­tive need,’ there is never any type of follow-up to ascer­tain the sta­tus of the evidence.

The audit rec­om­mended the sheriff’s office imple­ment a pol­icy that requires rou­tine mon­i­tor­ing of evi­dence that is removed from the Prop­erty and Evi­dence Unit includ­ing any evi­dence removed for inves­tiga­tive purposes.

The audit goes on to state, “Items not returned to the Prop­erty Room or prop­erly accounted for will even­tu­ally make head­lines or at least be respon­si­ble for los­ing a case.”

In addi­tion, ECS ques­tioned how sex­ual assault kits are stored and processed.

It found only about 5 per­cent of the sex­ual assault kits ever go to the Crime Lab and said, “It is unclear why more sex­ual assault kits and other evi­dence are not being sent to the Crime Lab for analy­sis in hopes of iden­ti­fy­ing a per­pe­tra­tor or link­age to other crimes.”

The audi­tors even sug­gested, “There is a very good like­li­hood that in a num­ber of the cases being stored in the Prop­erty Room the inves­ti­ga­tor has retired or trans­ferred to another unit and the case has been forgotten.”

“It’s pretty alarm­ing when you see that, when you see evi­dence that, for years, has not been sub­mit­ted for DNA test­ing when it comes to sex­ual assaults, when it comes to pos­si­ble homi­cide and mur­der cases,” said Babeu.

Despite the prob­lems, Babeu tells ABC15 he has met with the Pinal County Attor­ney and said they’re not aware of any cases that have been compromised.

Babeu said many of the issues are a result of mis­man­age­ment by pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions dat­ing back 20 years and said the proof is in the stor­age rooms.

“Clearly we have a stor­age prob­lem with evi­dence,” said Babeu as he stood next to boxes piled taller than him.

Evi­dence rooms are so full, boxes are stacked to the ceil­ing with left­overs spilled out onto the floor. Some items date back to the 1970s.

At least half of it can be tossed out but the sher­iff tells ABC15 he doesn’t have the staff to do it because they’re focus­ing on prop­erly pro­cess­ing the new evi­dence com­ing in.

So many items need to be purged the audit found it would take some­one 26 years to reduce the inven­tory by half.

“This is not nor­mal. This does not meet any stan­dards. The audit even talks about this. To prop­erly cat­a­log and store all this — this is not the way you do busi­ness,” he said.

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