IAPE Evidence Blog

The Den­ver Post, denverpost.com
BYLINE: Felisa Car­dona The Den­ver Post
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Den­ver, CO

Brian Hicks, from a Feb­ru­ary file photo. (John Pri­eto, The Den­ver Post)

Four kilo­grams of cocaine were mis­tak­enly destroyed by a Den­ver police prop­erty sergeant before the case against a noto­ri­ous gang king­pin could go to trial.

Now Brian Ken­neth Hicks is ask­ing a fed­eral judge to toss out his crack-cocaine-trafficking case or issue sanc­tions against pros­e­cu­tors for mis­han­dling evidence.

The Den­ver Police Depart­ment launched an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the destruc­tion of the cocaine, said Lt. Matt Murray.

Denver’s CBS4 first reported Hicks was mov­ing to have his case dis­missed because of the destroyed cocaine.

In Novem­ber 2006, Hicks was arrested after, police say, he tossed the kilos out a win­dow of a black Lexus sport util­ity vehi­cle dur­ing a chase.

Den­ver police kept the drugs at the prop­erty bureau, even though the case trans­ferred to fed­eral court when evi­dence of a wider con­spir­acy emerged.

The kilos were destroyed on May 11 while Sgt. John Zak? was purg­ing old property.

Doc­u­ments show Zak reviewed paper­work that said the state court case had been closed and did not make fur­ther inquiry as to whether a fed­eral court case existed. Zak also did not check an elec­tronic data­base that showed Den­ver dis­trict attor­ney inves­ti­ga­tor Robert Fuller? had placed a hold on the evidence.

Fuller inves­ti­gated the inci­dent and wrote in his report: “Sgt. Zak told this writer that the per­son­nel, includ­ing him, do not take the time to con­tact assigned detec­tives because the detec­tives often fail to respond to their inquiries regard­ing the destruc­tion of evi­dence. Sgt. Zak told this writer that the sys­tem of con­tact­ing the assigned detec­tives is a waste of time.”

Mur­ray declined to com­ment specif­i­cally on Zak’s state­ments to Fuller or the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the destruc­tion of the kilos. He said that the depart­ment stores more than half a mil­lion items in its prop­erty bureau and audits have shown mis­takes are extremely rare.

Pros­e­cu­tors have pho­tographs of the cocaine and had it ana­lyzed by a lab and could use that evi­dence at trial.

Hicks’ attor­ney, Martha Eske­sen, wrote that she wasn’t noti­fied by pros­e­cu­tors until Aug. 18, dur­ing a pass­ing con­ver­sa­tion at the fed­eral cour­t­house. A for­mal noti­fi­ca­tion wasn’t made until Sept. 9.

Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the Col­orado U.S. Attor­ney, declined to com­ment. Pros­e­cu­tors will file a response to the motion Oct. 24.

Judge Wiley Daniel set a hear­ing on Dec. 18.

Hicks, 32, was con­victed of mur­der ear­lier this year for order­ing his gang asso­ciates to kill Kalon­ni­ann Clark, a state wit­ness who was going to tes­tify against him in a 2005 attempted-murder case.

He is serv­ing life plus 120 years in state prison.

The gang leader also is known as the owner of the Chevro­let Tahoe? used in the 2007 fatal drive-by shoot­ing of Den­ver Bronco Dar­rent Williams. Hicks was never impli­cated in Williams’ death because he was in jail on the drug case at the time.

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

ABC7 NEWS, TheDenverChannel.com, thedenverchannel.com

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Pueblo County, CO

Tara Adame, the for­mer head of the Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office evi­dence and prop­erty sec­tion, resigned amid an inves­ti­ga­tion into miss­ing money, Sher­iff Kirk Tay­lor said.

Sher­iff: Evi­dence Room Head Resigns Amid Probe Of Miss­ing Money

PUEBLO, Colo. — The Pueblo County sher­iff says the head of the department’s evi­dence and prop­erty sec­tion has resigned amid an inves­ti­ga­tion into miss­ing cash.

Sher­iff Kirk Tay­lor told the Pueblo Chief­tain Fri­day that Tara Adame, a 10-year employee, resigned ear­lier this month.

Adame is con­sid­ered a “per­son of inter­est” in the inves­ti­ga­tion and has not been arrested or charged, Tay­lor said.

No phone list­ing could be found for her. The Chief­tain says she couldn’t be reached for com­ment Friday.

Tay­lor says “a sub­stan­tial amount of cash” is miss­ing from the department’s evi­dence sec­tion, includ­ing $400 from a homi­cide case.

The exact total hasn’t been released. Tay­lor says pre­scrip­tion drugs may also be missing.

“Nobody wants this to hap­pen, but it’s a human busi­ness and I’m glad our checks and bal­ances worked and caught this,” Tay­lor told the Chieftain.

Tay­lor said he called in the Col­orado Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion to help with the investigation.

The Asso­ci­ated Press con­tributed to this report.

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

9 Wants to Know, www.9news.com
BYLINE: Deborah.Sherman, Deborah.Sherman@9NEWS.com.
Link to Arti­cle
One Video

Broom­field, CO

BROOMFIELD — E-mails from Broomfield’s police chief and city coun­cil mem­bers show they’re blam­ing the media for report­ing about their prob­lems and try­ing to find and pun­ish the per­son who leaked memos about lost evi­dence and years of mis­man­age­ment inside the prop­erty and evi­dence room. The e-mails also show the chief took steps to address the prob­lems only after 9Wants to Know ques­tioned him about the miss­ing items.

“I cer­tainly hope you are able to dis­cover who had access to inter­nal memos and who leaked them to press and that appro­pri­ate action can be taken,” City Coun­cil­woman Linda Reynolds wrote on Feb. 8 to Police Chief Tom Deland. “I want you to know that per­son­ally I have all the con­fi­dence in you and your depart­ment and that this dis­tor­tion is trash news.”

“I have no idea why one of our own would bring dis­credit upon all the hard work­ing and brave mem­bers of our depart­ment,” Deland wrote in an e-mail Feb. to all police officers.

City Man­ager George Di Ciero told 9NEWS on Feb. 16 that it’s not city pol­icy to look for the peo­ple who released the audit to 9NEWS.

How­ever, in an e-mail to the city coun­cil, Deland wrote, “At this time, it is unknown exactly how 9NEWS obtained a copy of the con­fi­den­tial inter­nal audit. If that infor­ma­tion is even­tu­ally obtained, appro­pri­ate action will be taken.”

Ear­lier this month, a 9Wants to Know inves­ti­ga­tion released the results of inter­nal memos and an audit that found there were 15,000 pieces of old evi­dence that could be destroyed, there were sev­eral hun­dred data entry errors for track­ing evi­dence and prop­erty, and that there were 257 pieces of evi­dence miss­ing or unable to locate.

The audi­tor found the account­abil­ity for the evi­dence was unac­cept­able and found a “pat­tern of prob­lems” in the room. Experts told 9NEWS evi­dence must be han­dled with care to main­tain a “chain of cus­tody” for court cases.

Per­son­nel records show the two evi­dence tech­ni­cians in charge of the room had repeat­edly been ranked “pro­fi­cient” or aver­age or “below-standard” in areas crit­i­cal to man­age­ment and orga­ni­za­tion. Yet, the chief kept them in their cur­rent posi­tions with­out any dis­ci­pli­nary action.

E-mails show the chief made sev­eral changes only after he real­ized the story was going to be broad­cast on 9NEWS.

After inter­views with 9NEWS, “Chief Deland reas­signed a sergeant on a full-time basis to work in the prop­erty and evi­dence room and observe and mon­i­tor the pro­ce­dures,” Di Ciero wrote to the city coun­cil. “Chief Deland also requested the city’s newly appointed direc­tor of per­for­mance and inter­nal audit to con­duct a process audit of the prop­erty room.”

The chief ini­ti­ated per­for­mance eval­u­a­tions and improve­ment mea­sures and con­tacted the 17th Judi­cial Dis­trict Attor­ney about the miss­ing evi­dence after learn­ing about the 9NEWS inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to the e-mails.

Two audits of the evi­dence and prop­erty room were launched after the news cov­er­age. One audit is an over­all audit con­ducted by the city’s inde­pen­dent audi­tors who will report to the mayor and city coun­cil. The sec­ond audit will be con­ducted by the city and county’s inter­nal audi­tor and will be reported to the manager.

The man­ager was very crit­i­cal of the media for broad­cast­ing the city’s prob­lems, accord­ing to e-mails.

“Here is a clas­sic exam­ple of “if it bleeds, it leads,” Di Ciero wrote on Feb. 6. “This must really be a down time for real news, so they want to cre­ate some. This is patently disgusting.”

Of the miss­ing items, the police chief says 93 are still miss­ing and 162 of them have been accounted for, accord­ing to Deland.

He says 45 items were found in the room which had been mis­placed in one of the stor­age areas. 117 items were accounted for by review­ing hand­writ­ten logs that doc­u­mented the proper dis­po­si­tion of the prop­erty. Of the 93 items still miss­ing, the chief says he sus­pects data entry mis­takes are to blame and says per­son­nel are still try­ing to track down the items.

Of the mis­man­aged evi­dence, 45 items belonged to felony cases and 29 were mis­de­meanor or traf­fic cases, accord­ing to the 17th Judi­cial Dis­trict office. No crim­i­nal case out­comes were impacted as a result of the destroyed or miss­ing evidence.

If you have any news tips or story ideas, please e-mail Inves­tiga­tive Reporter Deb­o­rah Sher­man at Deborah.Sherman@9NEWS.com.

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