IAPE Evidence Blog

The Ari­zona Repub­lic, azcentral.com
BYLINE: Lind­sey Col­lom and Caitlin McGlade
Link to Article

Pinal County, AZ

DNA evi­dence from more than 200 sexual-assault cases in Pinal County has been lan­guish­ing in the Sheriff’s Office prop­erty room, some for decades, a recent audit revealed.

An inde­pen­dent audi­tor found that only about 5 per­cent of sexual-assault kits, includ­ing DNA sam­ples taken dur­ing foren­sic exam­i­na­tions of the vic­tims, ever went to the state crime lab for testing.

The fail­ure to process DNA is not so impor­tant to pros­e­cut­ing the case where the sam­ples come from but has a sig­nif­i­cant impact on police agen­cies’ abil­ity to solve other sex crimes and link cases.

Sam­ples are added to state and national DNA data­bases, which makes crime solv­ing eas­ier, experts say.

California-based Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc. cited the untested kits among the issues to be rec­ti­fied by the Pinal County sheriff’s evidence-and-property unit after decades of mismanagement.

“It’s unclear why more sexual-assault kits and evi­dence are not being sent to the crime lab for analy­sis in hopes of iden­ti­fy­ing a per­pe­tra­tor or link­age to other crimes,” the audit said. “You may have a rape/sexual assault case with a named sus­pect who may never have been arrested. Could this per­son be a ser­ial rapist? Could the DNA in that case match with oth­ers in the community?”

Sheriff’s offi­cials say 137 kits will now be sent to the Ari­zona Depart­ment of Pub­lic Safety’s foren­sic lab. The depart­ment is also for­mu­lat­ing a new pol­icy that man­dates tests of sexual-assault kits.

Untested kits are not exclu­sive to Pinal County.

An Octo­ber 2009 study of more than 2,000 law-enforcement agen­cies by the National Insti­tute of Jus­tice found that evi­dence from 14 per­cent of all unsolved homi­cides and 18 per­cent of unsolved rape cases had not been sub­mit­ted to crime labs.

“Not going for­ward with some of these (kits) if they can is a vio­la­tion of women’s rights, and everyone’s rights — the community’s, too, because that means the abuser is going to find another vic­tim,” said Heather Dumas, a legal advo­cate for Com­mu­nity Alliance Against Fam­ily Abuse in Apache Junction.

Ear­lier this year, the Depart­ment of Jus­tice awarded grants to researchers in Hous­ton and Wayne County, Mich., to study why such evi­dence is not tested and to develop prac­tices to improve the criminal-justice response to sex assaults.

Gen­er­ally, kits won’t get processed because a sus­pect has been iden­ti­fied, the vic­tim drops the case or inves­ti­ga­tors aren’t aware of the tech­nol­ogy, said Joe Latta, direc­tor of the audit­ing company.

“There is a nation­wide lack of under­stand­ing,” Latta said. “It’s not a Pinal County issue, and it’s not a Phoenix issue.… It’s hard get­ting every­one trained when not every­one under­stands the science.”

Just a decade ago, pro­cess­ing a kit was often use­less if the offi­cer didn’t already have a sus­pect in mind because he or she would have no DNA on file to compare.

But with the expan­sion of the Com­bined DNA Index Sys­tem, or CODIS, inves­ti­ga­tors could iden­tify sus­pects by enter­ing DNA records into the system.

Deputy Chief Harry Griz­zle was a detec­tive with the Pinal County Sheriff’s Office in the late 1990s, when some of the untested kits were collected.

Back then, Griz­zle said, inves­ti­ga­tors assumed that once they booked kits into the evi­dence unit, tech­ni­cians would send them to the lab so “we never fol­lowed up.”

Griz­zle recently looked through each kit col­lect­ing dust in the evi­dence room and their cor­re­spond­ing case files. He found 137 kits that should be analyzed.

“My ini­tial thought was we have some peo­ple out there that we can iden­tify as sus­pects that we have not done,” Griz­zle said.

It would not be effec­tive or prac­ti­cal to test every kit col­lected, said Todd Grif­fith, who over­sees the DPS crime lab. The ques­tion should be how many kits are from cases where DNA would be valu­able, he said.

“If you just go to a police agency and count out how many sex-assault kits are sit­ting there, you can come to a very large num­ber,” Grif­fith said. “What did the inves­ti­ga­tion show? That’s the first step.”

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

San Tan Val­ley Today, santanvalleytoday.com
BYLINE: Chase Kamp Today Pub­li­ca­tions
Link to Article

Pinal County, AZ

PCSO evi­dence stor­age facil­i­ties have mate­r­ial stacked to the ceiling.

With evi­dence ware­house shelves stacked to the ceil­ing and a small num­ber of over­whelmed staffers, an inde­pen­dent audit of PCSO evi­dence stor­age facil­i­ties found ram­pant dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion and poten­tial for mis­placed or tam­pered evidence.

The inter­nal audit, con­ducted by California-based Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems Inc., con­cluded PCSO evi­dence stor­age con­tains upwards of 300,000 items, about five to six times larger than com­pa­ra­ble departments.

The 300-page audit con­cludes that many of the items are inad­e­quately stored, orga­nized and pro­tected, and that most of them need to be discarded.

“Drugs aren’t stored with enhanced secu­rity which is required by all pro­fes­sional stan­dards,” the report reads. There is no video sur­veil­lance in drug stor­age, gun stor­age or the main warehouse.

An esti­mated 25 per­cent of evi­dence items are not stored in the com­puter data­base, with data entry of new evi­dence at least 90 days behind.

Evi­dence sub­sta­tions in San Manuel, Gold Canyon and Queen Creek have faulty locks, drop-boxes and slots that can lead to evi­dence tam­per­ing, the audit found.

Sher­iff Paul Babeu claims no cases have been affected by the dis­ar­ray but the poten­tial for prob­lems is significant.

“At this time we are not aware of any issues raised in the audit affect­ing any past or cur­rent cases,” Babeu said in a writ­ten state­ment. “The pos­si­bil­ity it could have affected cases is real and this is why we are try­ing to address it now so no vic­tim will ever be denied justice.”

Elias John­son, Pinal County Sheriff’s Office Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer said Babeu ini­ti­ated the audit to get rec­om­men­da­tions from Evi­dence Con­trol Sys­tems, whom he said set the indus­try stan­dard for evi­dence stor­age. “We’re not happy about it,” John­son said, “We’re hop­ing to be trans­par­ent about the situation.” 

John­son said the evi­dence prob­lem has been passed down from pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions. “Staffing lev­els have not changed since the 1990s, when we were very still rural,” John­son said.

The under­staffing and rapid pop­u­la­tion growth in Pinal County has led to mam­moth back­logs. The report states PCSO takes in an aver­age of 7600 evi­dence items a year and only purges about 2500.

“The most impor­tant pri­or­ity is get­ting new evi­dence secured and logged,” John­son said. “Staff has been so busy with that, they haven’t got­ten to the sec­ond pri­or­ity, which is purging.”

The report esti­mated 90 per­cent of evi­dence items in PCSO’s Bai­ley Street main facil­ity were eli­gi­ble to purge.

John­son said PCSO plans to add three to four new evi­dence tech­ni­cians to the staff. One tech­ni­cian has been hired since the pub­lic release of the audit. “We still don’t have the office space to put them in,” he said.

PCSO is draft­ing a pol­icy for evi­dence han­dling that will address report find­ings such as an incon­sis­tent bar code sys­tem and evi­dence check­out pro­ce­dure. “Any deputy within the orga­ni­za­tion can vir­tu­ally sign-out evi­dence for any case with­out ques­tion,” the report reads. “Addi­tion­ally, there are no con­trols ensur­ing that the evi­dence is returned to the prop­erty room.”

John­son said a pro­posal to the Board of Super­vi­sors is being planned and he esti­mated addi­tional staffing, tech­no­log­i­cal improve­ments and expan­sions to facil­i­ties could cost up to $1.5 million.

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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.

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