IAPE Evidence Blog

WDRB Fox 41, fox41.com
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Louisville, KY

Troy Hilpp, for­mer LMPD recruit

LMPD Prop­erty Room

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB Fox 41) — A man who wanted to be a Louisville Metro Police Offi­cer has been accused of steal­ing from the police department.

33-year-old Troy Hilpp has been charged with theft and tam­per­ing with phys­i­cal evi­dence after inves­ti­ga­tors say he stole sev­eral items from the police department’s evi­dence room in August.

LMPD Sergeant Robert Biven said Hilpp was hired by LMPD in Novem­ber 2009. A few months later was hurt and assigned tem­porar­ily to work in the prop­erty room at 7th Street and Indus­try Road.

“He was there approx­i­mately 5 months it was at that time that our secu­rity mea­sures quickly alerted our super­vi­sors to some unlaw­ful activ­ity that was occur­ring,” said Sgt. Biven.

Court doc­u­ments show that on Aug. 23, Hilpp “removed a Play Sta­tion 3 from the evi­dence shelf of the Louisville Metro Police Depart­ment Prop­erty Room, along with a printer and an ampli­fier, and placed them in a dump­ster to steal them from the Louisville Metro Police Department.”

Click HERE to view the indictments.

Doc­u­ments also state that he used the same method to steal two dig­i­tal cam­eras from the prop­erty room — and that those cam­eras were found at his home on Aug. 30.

The prop­erty room is where police store evi­dence seized in con­nec­tion with crimes. That evi­dence is stored and pre­served so that it might be exhib­ited dur­ing trial.

Addi­tion­ally, Hilpp is accused of ille­gally obtain­ing 105 hydrocodone pills and 40 oxy­codone pills by fil­ing false pre­scrip­tions and doc­tor shopping.

Louisville Metro Police spokesman Sgt. Biven said Chief Robert White fired Hilpp in Sep­tem­ber fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion. Fox 41 News has also learned that he is a for­mer Uni­ver­sity of Louisville base­ball player.

Pros­e­cu­tors and Hilpp’s defense team were attempt­ing to work out a plea deal dur­ing a court hear­ing Mon­day morning.

Hilpp is sched­uled to be back in court in January.

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

www.kentucky.com
By Bill Estep — bestep@herald-leader.com
Link to Article

Whit­ley County, KY

Lawrence Hodge

Grand jury cites theft of money, guns

Whit­ley County Sher­iff Lawrence Hodge has stolen hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars in pub­lic money dur­ing his two terms in office, a local grand jury has charged.

The grand jury indicted Hodge on Mon­day on 18 charges of abuse of pub­lic trust and three counts of tam­per­ing with phys­i­cal evi­dence — all felonies.

Most of the charges allege Hodge took money from accounts at his office, though some allege that he sold or gave away guns that had been seized in investigations.

The charges of tam­per­ing with evi­dence allege that he failed to prop­erly safe­guard guns, knives or drugs that had been seized.

Hodge began tak­ing money his first year in office, in 2003, the grand jury charged.

“It started pretty quick, based upon what the grand jury saw,” Commonwealth’s Attor­ney Allen Trim­ble said Monday.

There was at least one charge alleg­ing theft for every year Hodge has been in office.

The amount of money involved in the alleged thefts totaled about $350,000, Trim­ble said.

The most seri­ous charges in the indict­ment are Class C felonies, pun­ish­able by five to 10 years in prison.

Hodge might be fac­ing other prob­lems as well. He also is under fed­eral inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to a report issued by the grand jury that indicted him.

Fed­eral author­i­ties searched Hodge’s office Mon­day, Trim­ble said.

Trim­ble said the local grand jury focused its work on issues apart from those under inves­ti­ga­tion by fed­eral authorities.

Hodge lost his bid for a third term in the May Repub­li­can pri­mary to Colan Har­rell, a retired state police detec­tive sched­uled to take over the office in January.

Hodge may stay in office while under indict­ment. Attempts to reach him Mon­day after­noon were not successful.

Cir­cuit Judge Paul Braden appointed the spe­cial Whit­ley County grand jury in June to inves­ti­gate Hodge because of numer­ous com­plaints from cit­i­zens and local news­pa­per arti­cles that pointed out prob­lems, accord­ing to a report the panel issued.

Among other things, the Corbin Times-Tribune reported on appar­ent irreg­u­lar­i­ties in how Hodge’s office accounted for guns that offi­cers had seized.

In Decem­ber, Hodge reported that his office in the Whit­ley County Cour­t­house had been bur­glar­ized shortly before he was sup­posed to release records about the gun inventory.

Hodge claimed that as a result he could not turn over the records.

There was a good deal of skep­ti­cism locally about the alleged burglary.

One count of the indict­ment said Hodge “con­verted to his own use” 12 guns his office had seized.

As for the charges related to stolen money, the grand jury said Hodge wrote nearly $100,000 in checks to him­self from an account in his office, say­ing the money was for under­cover drug buys.

How­ever, Hodge did not account for the money and took out much of that money at a time when he and deputies were not pre­sent­ing cases to grand juries for pos­si­ble indict­ments, the spe­cial grand jury said.

“He was never pre­sent­ing any cases,” Trim­ble said. “Come on, something’s wrong somewhere.”

Aside from the alleged thefts, Hodge did a poor job tack­ling the drug prob­lem in a county where, like many oth­ers, it is ram­pant, the grand jury said in its report.

Hodge’s office some­times went a year with­out send­ing any seized drugs to a crime lab­o­ra­tory to be ana­lyzed, and failed to prop­erly pre­serve evi­dence seized in cases, the grand jury said.

There also was a prob­lem with deputies per­sis­tently fail­ing to show up for court appear­ances, which ham­pered pros­e­cu­tions, the grand jury said.

In addi­tion to tak­ing money from the drug and alco­hol account, Hodge allegedly stole from tax collections.

Sher­iffs in Ken­tucky pro­vide law enforce­ment but also col­lect prop­erty taxes and other fees.

They keep a per­cent­age to run their offices but for­ward the bulk of the money to a vari­ety of local agen­cies such as schools, libraries and health departments.

If they per­form poorly, those other agen­cies can be shortchanged.

State Audi­tor Crit Luallen’s office has iden­ti­fied a num­ber of finan­cial and account­ing prob­lems in Hodge’s office in recent years, includ­ing poor book­keep­ing and miss­ing money.

Audits showed Hodge’s office filed an unusu­ally large num­ber of “sup­ple­men­tal reports” with the state.

Those reports are required when a sher­iff adjusts someone’s tax bill, such as by waiv­ing a penalty for a late payment.

Such reports “can be used to con­ceal the theft of tax pay­ments to the sheriff’s office,” one audit of Hodge’s office said.

The grand jury said those state audits were of par­tic­u­lar inter­est in its investigation.

The audits for 2005, 2006 and 2007 showed “a shock­ing abuse of the tax col­lect­ing process and a crim­i­nal fail­ure to account for tax receipts,” the grand jury said.

The grand jury noted that the charges against Hodge were not a gen­eral indict­ment of every employee in the office. Many are ded­i­cated and trust­wor­thy, and helped in the inves­ti­ga­tion, the panel said.

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

Har­lan Daily Enter­prise, Ky., STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS
BYLINE: Deb­bie Cald­well The Har­lan Daily Enterprise

Har­lan County, KY

Oct. 05 – War­rants have been issued on 11 inmates at the Har­lan County Deten­tion Cen­ter for a charge of pro­mot­ing con­tra­band after they allegedly took pre­scrip­tion drugs obtained from an evi­dence room at the Har­lan County Cour­t­house on Sept. 27.

Har­lan County Jailer Curt Stal­lard said 29 work release pro­gram inmates were placed at the old cour­t­house build­ing to assist in the prepa­ra­tions for instal­la­tion of a new ele­va­tor. The inmates jobs were to remove debris from sev­eral rooms where ren­o­va­tions were com­plete and fur­ther con­struc­tion could begin. “Four inmates were instructed to enter the evi­dence room on the third floor that used to house evi­dence and con­fis­cated goods from many older cases in Har­lan County,” Stal­lard said. “They were under the super­vi­sion of Mar­vin Goins, super­vi­sor of main­te­nance at the Har­lan County Cour­t­house. Mr. Goins is also state trained by The Ken­tucky Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions to super­vise work release inmates. All evi­den­tial items were sup­posed to have been taken out by August of 2010, leav­ing only scat­tered trash and large fil­ing cab­i­nets to be removed.

“At the same time the inmates entered the evi­dence room other inmates were work­ing on all three floors of the build­ing. Three deputy jail­ers were posi­tioned, one on each floor, to main­tain order and keep the gen­eral pub­lic from access­ing the inmates. Due to work release inmates find­ing pills in the evi­dence room, 11 of the 29 inmates failed drug tests.”

Stal­lard said as a result of the find­ings war­rants have been issued on all 11 inmates. The inmates also have been given 90 days in iso­la­tion and are no longer eli­gi­ble for the work release program.

Har­lan County Judge-Executive Joe Grieshop said Goins had the inmates tak­ing the metal shelv­ing out of the evi­dence room and clean­ing up debris and trash in the hallways.

“Appar­ently, there was some evi­dence left behind that the inmates were clever enough to get their hands on,” Grieshop said. “This was an unfor­tu­nate inci­dent, because the work release inmates had an oppor­tu­nity to get their life back on track.”

Grieshop said the evi­dence room hadn’t been used in years and he was told most of the items in the room were from the early years. He said the paper items were shred­ded and other items were turned over to Har­lan Cir­cuit Court Clerk Paul Williams office.

Har­lan County Sher­iff Mar­vin Lip­fird said his office didn’t use the evi­dence room and he had no knowl­edge of what was inside the room.

“This inci­dent proves that the 11 inmates who failed drug tests are not ready to be released from incar­cer­a­tion,” Stal­lard said. “Con­sid­er­ing they are still incar­cer­ated, the first oppor­tu­nity that temp­ta­tion has put before them and they can’t turn it away. What will they do the moment they are released? Over 90 per­cent of work release inmates are state approved.”

The inmates charged include Jesse Brooks, Reg­gie Cot­trell, Tim­o­thy Hughes, Wayne Mid­dle­ton, Calvin Pace, Thomas Reynolds, Chad Say­lor, Justin Simp­son, Cebert Smith, Dustin Smith and Jimmy W. Smith.

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