IAPE Evidence Blog

North County Times, nctimes.com
BYLINE: TERI FIGUEROA tfigueroa@nctimes.com
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Carls­bad, CA

An arraign­ment was can­celed Fri­day and the inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues for a Carls­bad police offi­cer accused of steal­ing drugs from the department’s evi­dence room, a San Diego County dis­trict attorney’s office spokesper­son said.

Vice and nar­cotics detec­tive Michael C. Koch, 44, was arrested by fel­low Carls­bad police offi­cers after “numer­ous police employ­ees” caught him steal­ing drugs from a stor­age room Jan. 19, accord­ing to a state­ment last week from the Police Department.

Koch, an 18-year vet­eran of the depart­ment, was arrested, booked into jail that night and posted $25,000 bail the fol­low­ing day.

The vet­eran offi­cer was told to appear in court on Jan. 27 for arraign­ment, but that hear­ing was can­celed, said dis­trict attor­ney spokesman Steve Walker.

Walker said the inves­ti­ga­tion is con­tin­u­ing, but declined to com­ment further.

Carls­bad police spokes­woman Jodee Sasway said the depart­ment is doing “a thor­ough and com­pre­hen­sive investigation.”

Koch is on paid admin­is­tra­tive leave, Sasway said.

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

The Daily Breeze, dailybreeze.com
BYLINE: C.J. Lin, Staff Writer, cj.lin@dailynews.com
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Los Ange­les, CA

AUDIT: Report months ago found errors, but replac­ing old tracker will take time.

Six months after an audit exposed prob­lems with the Los Ange­les Police Department’s evi­dence rooms, con­cern remains that the department’s out­dated track­ing sys­tem could lose evi­dence cru­cial to crim­i­nal cases.

The June audit looked at the evidence-tracking sys­tem, installed 20 years ago, and found errors in 6 per­cent of the pieces stud­ied. The audit said evi­dence was not described accu­rately, items weren’t stored where they were sup­posed to be, and the poten­tial for the pro­gram to mal­func­tion was “eminent.”

“It’s cer­tainly a risk,” said Richard Drooyan, pres­i­dent of the Los Ange­les police com­mis­sion, the civil­ian over­sight board of the LAPD.

“Say there was a piece of phys­i­cal evi­dence, a shirt that matched a shirt being worn by a bank rob­ber in a bank rob­bery,” Drooyan said. “You want to be able to have the detec­tive say, ‘This is the shirt I found when I searched the suspect’s house.’ If that shirt is miss­ing, you can’t tie it to the bank rob­bery because you don’t have it anymore.”

The prob­lem is com­pounded by near-capacity prop­erty rooms and a lack of elec­tronic mon­i­tor­ing of who accesses the rooms, accord­ing to the audit.

The elec­tronic secu­rity sys­tem that con­trols access to prop­erty rooms is not work­ing in sev­eral divi­sions, and there are no auto­matic logs of those enter­ing or leav­ing the rooms, accord­ing to the audit. The audit also found that sur­veil­lance cam­eras mon­i­tor­ing the rooms were not reg­u­larly mon­i­tored or reviewed.

Since the audit, depart­ment offi­cials said they have begun rou­tine inspec­tions of the secu­rity sys­tems and sur­veil­lance tapes.

The depart­ment is draft­ing a request for pro­pos­als for a new evidence-tracking sys­tem. It could take at least six months to select a ven­dor, accord­ing to officials.

“I’m sat­is­fied that they know it’s a pri­or­ity and that they’re going to move to get this thing out,” Drooyan said. “But I’m not sat­is­fied with the sys­tem that we have in place.”

Drooyan said he was not aware of any instances where evi­dence was lost, or of any crim­i­nal cases being affected by the anti­quated system.

“This is a prob­lem that is known to the entire city and the depart­ment,” said Cmdr. Scott Kroe­ber of LAPD’s Office of Spe­cial Oper­a­tions. “The sys­tems in place are such that I believe they are suf­fi­cient for what can and should be done until we bring it online.”

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

Impe­r­ial Val­ley Press, ivpressonline.com
BYLINE: SILVIO J. PANTA Staff Writer
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West­mor­land, CA

Two for­mer West­mor­land Police Depart­ment offi­cers who were arrested in rela­tion to the theft of fire­fight­ing equip­ment and weapons received jail terms Friday.

Juan Jesus Chavez, 26, and Alfredo Tovar, 29, each received the term of two years in state prison that Impe­r­ial County Supe­rior Court Judge Ray­mundo Cota sus­pended under the terms of an indi­cated sen­tence that instead placed both defen­dants on three years’ probation.

Chavez, a for­mer full-time police offi­cer who worked for the WPD for 18 months before his res­ig­na­tion in Feb­ru­ary, also received a year in county jail with credit for 78 days served.

Tovar, who worked as a WPD reserve offi­cer, got a jail term of 180 days with credit for one day served. Chavez received the larger sen­tence because he was sus­pected of hav­ing a larger role in the thefts, pros­e­cu­tor Jef­frey Brooker said.

Chavez resigned from the WPD three days after his arrest in Feb­ru­ary. It’s sus­pected the prop­erty was taken dur­ing a six-month period last year.

The judge opted to sen­tence the defen­dants based on the aggra­vated nature of the offenses, Brooker said.

Nei­ther defen­dant had any crim­i­nal record but “on the other hand” had abused their posi­tions of trust, Brooker said.

Chavez pleaded guilty to three sep­a­rate charges of grand theft and Tovar pleaded guilty to one felony charge of bur­glary. Both defen­dants entered their pleas Sept. 16, which was the day Chavez sur­ren­dered him­self to authorities.

Tovar chose to wait until sen­tenc­ing Fri­day before turn­ing him­self in, Brooker said.

Other equip­ment taken was a pro­tec­tive police vest, Taser car­tridges and weapons that included a .22 cal­iber rifle and a .40 cal­iber Glock semi-automatic pis­tol, accord­ing to a pro­ba­tion report.

The report also detailed the theft of a cell phone from a cit­i­zen Chavez had arrested and fire­works taken from an evi­dence locker.

Most of the prop­erty was recov­ered but some of it, like the breath­ing appa­ra­tus fire­fight­ers use, had been sold on eBay, Brooker said.

The West­mor­land Fire Depart­ment took a loss of about $28,000 as the four pieces of breath­ing equip­ment were val­ued at $7,000 each, Brooker said.

Staff Writer Sil­vio J. Panta can be reached at 760 – 337-3442 or at spanta@ivpressonline.com

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