IAPE Evidence Blog

Lawrence Jour­nal World, ljworld.com
BYLINE: George Diepen­brock
Link to Article

Dou­glas County, KS

Lawrence Police Chief Tarik Khatib peers into the moun­tains of card­board boxes lin­ing the main evi­dence stor­age room on the sec­ond floor of the Judi­cial and Law Enforce­ment Cen­ter, 111 E. 11th St.

He jokes that his two evi­dence offi­cers and civil­ian employee, who over­see thou­sands of pieces of evi­dence for the police and the Dou­glas County Sheriff’s Office, could work for ship­ping giant UPS.

“There’s not a wasted square foot of space, really,” Khatib says.

The room is in the for­mer gym from when that part of the build­ing was a jail, and it now includes a steel stair­case for two makeshift floors inside. It’s more room for evi­dence offi­cers Keith Jones and Doug Payne to find a place for new evi­dence, like pos­si­ble stolen items that were recov­ered or even drugs, guns and money.

But there’s not much space left, and the police depart­ment has evi­dence stored in more than one place, includ­ing at the city-owned for­mer Morton’s Build­ing Mate­ri­als Inc. build­ing, 900 E. 15th St., where items like vehi­cles are con­t­a­m­i­nated with mold because the build­ing leaks and has other problems.

Khatib has used the space restric­tions for evi­dence stor­age as one exam­ple in urg­ing city lead­ers to explore build­ing a new law enforce­ment facil­ity to house the entire department.

“We, as a law enforce­ment agency, have not really had a pur­pose­fully designed facil­ity for just police, as long as I can remem­ber,” said the 20-year depart­ment veteran.

Facil­i­ties assessment

Cur­rently the city’s police depart­ment is largely split between the patrol divi­sion down­town at the law enforce­ment cen­ter, which also houses Dou­glas County Dis­trict Court and the sheriff’s admin­is­tra­tion, and the Lawrence police detec­tives and admin­is­tra­tion in west Lawrence at the Inves­ti­ga­tions and Train­ing Cen­ter, 4820 Bob Billings Parkway.

City com­mis­sion­ers on Tues­day will con­sider a pro­posed time line for assess­ing the police department’s buildings.

“At this point peo­ple rec­og­nize that we at least need to take a look at what our facil­ity needs are,” he said. “The first step in that is find­ing an archi­tec­tural firm or some­body famil­iar with police facil­i­ties to take a look at what we have.”

The pro­posal has the com­mis­sion approv­ing a pos­si­ble archi­tec­tural firm by late Decem­ber, which could report back to com­mis­sion­ers in Feb­ru­ary. Com­mis­sion­ers did include $30,000 in their 2012 bud­get for the study.

Khatib said the out­side firm could check for effi­cien­cies in how the depart­ment cur­rently uses its facil­i­ties, and com­mis­sion­ers could com­pare that with rec­om­men­da­tions he has made, includ­ing for a build­ing designed as a police depart­ment that could help pro­tect more police vehi­cles, have bet­ter inter­view rooms and allow for the depart­ment to be housed in one build­ing to facil­i­tate bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion between patrol offi­cers and detec­tives, for example.

He said the city around 2000 pur­chased the west Lawrence build­ing, which was cur­rently con­structed as an office build­ing, and that half of it is not hab­it­able for the depart­ment with­out exten­sive renovation.

“A law enforce­ment facil­ity some­times is not per­ceived as glam­orous and impor­tant and maybe as cul­tur­ally sig­nif­i­cant as some of the other projects the city does,” Khatib said. “But there is a real need for a police depart­ment facility.”

Evi­dence process, challenges

Find­ing space for the 120,000 items col­lected in evi­dence is one major chal­lenge the depart­ment has, Khatib said. It can be any­thing from a crushed can from a minor-in-possession case to a weapon in an alleged homi­cide to a vehi­cle bumper in a fatal­ity accident.

“The proper han­dling of evi­dence and the proper preser­va­tion of evi­dence is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of case prepa­ra­tion and pros­e­cu­tion and find­ing the truth in cases,” Khatib said.

He said his offi­cers do their best despite the obsta­cle the tight space presents.

Often the evi­dence col­lected must stay there because court cases can take months or even years before they’re resolved. And even then, they’re required to pre­serve cer­tain things later in case of an appeal. Jones, the evi­dence offi­cer, pointed on Fri­day to a box of items the depart­ment had finally received legal per­mis­sion to get rid of. They were from an auto bur­glary case from 1998.

Jones works to train offi­cers, espe­cially the new recruits, about how to pack­age items to take up as lit­tle space as pos­si­ble, espe­cially when they are in paper bags.

“Do not pack­age air,” Jones told the department’s 13 recruits in a recent pre­sen­ta­tion. “We’ve got plenty of it back there, and we really don’t need any more.”

He also implored the recruits to be cau­tious when they recover firearms, espe­cially to make sure they are no longer loaded. If they can’t get the ammu­ni­tion out, they must notify a super­vi­sor and Jones him­self before they sub­mit the gun in an evi­dence locker.

“We need to know about it,” Jones said. “What I don’t want to have is one of us come to work and find a loaded weapon and it acci­den­tally goes off.”

He also warned the recruits to be extra care­ful when they sub­mit drugs, guns and money as evi­dence. Cases involv­ing those items are most likely to be hotly con­tested in court, he said, and bring extra scrutiny on the department.

“You can see where your integrity as a police offi­cer is very, very impor­tant,” Jones said. “You have to take that extra step and make sure that it’s done right, so that some­thing doesn’t come back on you and could bite you.”

Offi­cer Keith Jones checks the third level of the evi­dence room at the Judi­cial and Law Enforce­ment Cen­ter, 111 E. 11th St. Crime evi­dence is housed in var­i­ous loca­tions and space is get­ting tight. Photo by Kevin Ander­son. Lawrence Jour­nal World.
 

Offi­cer Michael Ram­sey processes items that were found in a stolen car. He had to use a roller stor­age cab­i­net for a work sur­face in the garage under the Judi­cial and Law Enforce­ment Cen­ter. Photo by Kevin Ander­son. Lawrence Jour­nal World.
 

A ziplock bag holds smaller bags of cash that is wait­ing to be counted in the evi­dence room. Photo by Kevin Ander­son. Lawrence Jour­nal World.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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

The Bon­ner Springs-Edwardsville Chief­tain
The Chief­tain, The BonnerSprings.com, bonnersprings.com
BYLINE: Staff Report
http://www.bonnersprings.com/news/2011/jun/09/kbi-investigates-break-bonner-pd-evidence-room/
Link to Article

Bon­ner Springs, KS

Bon­ner Springs Police Depart­ment says its evi­dence room was bro­ken into last month, and the Kansas Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion is now look­ing into the incident.

Lt. Rick Schu­bert, spokesman for the Bon­ner police, said police dis­cov­ered evi­dence of forced entry into the department’s prop­erty room in early May. The KBI was called in to inves­ti­gate and per­form an audit, but pre­lim­i­nary find­ings show that no items in the room were miss­ing or tam­pered with.

Schu­bert said the depart­ment has since taken steps to increase secu­rity around the evi­dence room.

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

Salina Jour­nal, www.salina.com
BYLINE: ERIN MATHEWS Salina Jour­nal
Link to Article

Beloit, KS

BELOIT — A Beloit man is being accused of bur­glar­iz­ing a room being used for evi­dence pro­cess­ing by the Beloit Police Depart­ment and steal­ing marijuana-growing sup­plies being held as evi­dence in a case against him and fam­ily members.

After the bur­glary was dis­cov­ered at 1 p.m. Sun­day, the Kansas Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion was con­tacted to assist in the investigation.

An audit of all prop­erty and evi­dence con­tained in the room was imme­di­ately com­pleted, Beloit Police Chief Ryan Stocker said in a state­ment released Wednes­day to the Journal.

The only evi­dence miss­ing was from a case involv­ing Michael Sowter Sr., 46, Michael Sowter II, 22, and James Sowter, 21, all of Beloit, accord­ing to the statement.

All three Sowter men were arrested at 10:30 p.m. Sun­day for vio­lat­ing terms of bond.

Michael Sowter II also faces charges of bur­glary, theft, crim­i­nal dam­age to prop­erty and obstruc­tion of the legal process.

He is accused of steal­ing grow­ing pots, soil, fer­til­izer and other evi­dence that was being held in con­nec­tion with the case against the Sowters, Stocker said.

James Sowter has been released on bond, and Michael Sowter Sr. and Michael Sowter II were still in jail Wednes­day, Stocker said. A $75,000 cash-only bond was set on Michael Sowter II on Wednesday.

The bur­glary occurred at the for­mer National Guard Armory, 416 E. 12th, which is now owned by the city of Beloit and is being used by sev­eral city departments.

A win­dow was bro­ken to gain entry into the build­ing. Also dam­aged was an inside door that leads to a room where evi­dence is sub­mit­ted to the police depart­ment before it is trans­ferred to another secure loca­tion, Stocker’s state­ment said.

“I have received sev­eral phone calls from con­cerned indi­vid­u­als want­ing to know if any evi­dence from other cases has been tam­pered with, and I can assure them that the only case tam­pered with was the pre­vi­ous case against the Sowters,” Stocker said.

Mitchell County Attor­ney Mark Noah said the marijuana-growing charges against the Sowters likely will be dropped, but the new charges against Michael Sowter II could carry an even stiffer penalty.

“I don’t think I’m going to have a hard time get­ting a con­vic­tion,” he said. “I’ve never seen any­thing like this ever.”

He said Michael Sowter II is sched­uled to make a first appear­ance today in Mitchell County Dis­trict Court.

He said police have dig­i­tal pho­tographs of the evi­dence that was stolen to use as evi­dence in the bur­glary case. He said the evi­dence in the marijuana-growing case most strongly impli­cated Michael Sowter II.

Among the evi­dence taken was a mar­i­juana grower’s bible, Noah said.

Noah said steps have been taken to improve secu­rity at the evi­dence stor­age site.

“Dif­fer­ent arrange­ments have been made for secur­ing evi­dence now so we aren’t going to have that prob­lem again,” he said.

n Reporter Erin Math­ews can be reached at 822‑1415 or by e-mail at emathews@salina.com

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