IAPE Evidence Blog

The Daily News, galvestondailynews.com
BYLINE: Christo­pher Smith Gon­za­lez, The Daily News
Link to Article

La Mar­que, TX

LA MARQUE — Drugs, money and pos­si­bly firearms all went miss­ing from the School Dis­trict Police Department’s evi­dence room at some point dur­ing the admin­is­tra­tion of the pre­vi­ous police chief, Tim­o­thy Fields, the cur­rent police chief for the school dis­trict, said.

Fields said he learned of the miss­ing items when he con­ducted an audit soon after he was appointed chief in July 2010. Fields would not go into specifics about the weapons reported missing.

Fields said he noti­fied the Texas Rangers, which often inves­ti­gates other law-enforcement agen­cies, about the miss­ing evi­dence when he first did the audit. Since then, he also has found an offense report writ­ten by a for­mer school dis­trict offi­cer on June 29, 2009 that states evi­dence had gone miss­ing, Fields said.

He also has found an April 2009 email between for­mer police Chief Rus­sell Wash­ing­ton and the school district’s human resources direc­tor dis­cussing miss­ing evi­dence, Fields said.

Wash­ing­ton could not be reached for comment.

Fields was appointed police chief after Wash­ing­ton was fired in 2010. At the time, Wash­ing­ton was under indict­ment in an alleged attempt to fal­sify doc­u­ments to obtain a title to a vehicle.

The charges were dropped, and Wash­ing­ton has demanded his old job back, along with compensation.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the miss­ing evi­dence was under way, and no sus­pects had been iden­ti­fied, Fields said.

“This is not some­thing that was done on a whim,” Fields said of the inves­ti­ga­tion. “The only thing I’m doing is try­ing to pro­tect the integrity of the department.”

Some­one needs to be held account­able for the miss­ing evi­dence, Fields said.

He said one of the rea­sons he was adamant about fol­low­ing through with the inves­ti­ga­tion was he didn’t want to be left respon­si­ble for some­thing that did not hap­pen under his watch.

“I don’t want it to blow up in my face,” Fields said.

The miss­ing evi­dence was kept in a locked file cab­i­net in a room at the high school, Fields said. Only the school district’s police offi­cers had access to it, he said. Fields said he now is the only offi­cer who has access to that room.

He said he has asked for assis­tance from the dis­trict attorney’s office and the fed­eral Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explo­sives. He said Texas Rangers have come by the depart­ment and that he was work­ing with them to file the paper­work the Rangers need.

Ecomet Bur­ley, super­in­ten­dent for the La Mar­que school dis­trict, said he had been made aware of the miss­ing items by Fields.

“It is an ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tion by the chief of police into the miss­ing items and the incon­sis­ten­cies in the report that was filed,” Bur­ley said.

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

KRGV.com, krgv.com
BYLINE: Camaron Abun­des
Link to Arti­cle
One Video

McAllen, TX

MCALLEN — The DEA needs a lot more space than a small Val­ley police depart­ment evi­dence locker to han­dle all the drugs they seize each day.

Beams of light bounce off the bun­dles of mar­i­juana inside a gray non­de­script ware­house. It’s is a tem­po­rary hold­ing zone for ille­gal drugs. The Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion must incin­er­ate the evi­dence on a reg­u­lar basis. The aisles fill up in a mat­ter of weeks.

“In the last five years, things have really picked up in the Rio Grande Val­ley,” said Will Glaspy, who heads up the McAllen dis­trict office for the DEA.

Glaspy took CHANNEL 5 NEWS to an undis­closed loca­tion to see the story behind the drug seizure sta­tis­tics. Last year, the DEA seized more than 615,000 pounds of mar­i­juana. That’s enough to fill 16 tractor-trailers full of the ille­gal drugs.

Glaspy said law enforce­ment is mak­ing more busts because of added resources. He added they’re also work­ing closely with their coun­ter­parts in Mexico.

“It’s a game of cat and mouse, always has been. They’ll try some­thing new until we catch onto it then they’ll try new trends in traf­fick­ing after that,” explained Glaspy.

DEA watches what drug smug­glers are doing in the Val­ley. The agents also eye the trends down south.

“We don’t think the car­tels are stag­ing their drugs in Mex­ico as long as they used to. Now as soon as they get their drugs up to their north­ern bor­der, they’re try­ing to get those across the river and out of the Rio Grande Val­ley as quickly as pos­si­ble,” said Glaspy.

The des­per­a­tion among smug­glers may be fuel­ing the rise in seizures. In 2011, the DEA nearly dou­bled its intake from fis­cal year 2010. Glaspy said the local, state and fed­eral depart­ments are shar­ing infor­ma­tion too.

“Every­body works closely with one another; every­one shares their infor­ma­tion and intel­li­gence,” Glaspy told us.

The ware­house pro­vides a win­dow into a world many will never see. The effects of the drug war can be felt in every cor­ner of the Rio Grande Val­ley. Glaspy said it will only take a few weeks to fill the ware­house up.

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

HOUSTON CHRONICLE, chron.com
Link to Article

Hous­ton, TX

Our stom­ach sank when we saw the head­line “More Untested Rape Kits at HPD” (August 10, Page 1). The Hous­ton Police Depart­ment, it turned out, doesn’t have a shock­ing 4,000 rape kits lan­guish­ing untested in its prop­erty room; the num­ber is actu­ally closer to 7,000.

An ugly sense of déjà vu set in. How many times, we won­dered, has the Hous­ton Police Department’s scandal-plagued crime lab turned out to be even worse than we’d pre­vi­ously believed?

Con­sider just a sam­pling of lab-related head­lines from the last decade:

July 29, 2011: “HPD crime lab faces more heat; For­mer super­vi­sor tes­ti­fies she quit over accu­racy of alco­hol tests.”

July 19, 2010: “Dis­trict attor­ney calls for emer­gency DNA lab; Houston’s back­log of cases keeps growing.”

Jan­u­ary 27, 2010: “HPD lab faces 3rd back­log prob­lem; 300 cases are in need of firearm forensics.”

Decem­ber 13, 2009: “Prints and prob­lems; HPD’s fin­ger­print scan­dal reminds us how much we need an inde­pen­dent crime lab.”

April 25, 2009: “Another crime lab bun­gle sur­faces; Pros­e­cu­tors to ask that man who has spent 22 years in prison be freed on bail. Richard could be 4th man cleared after crime lab errors.”

Jan­u­ary 26, 2008: “HPD again shuts down crime lab’s DNA unit; Move fol­lows res­ig­na­tion of division’s leader in cheat­ing probe.”

Decem­ber 12, 2007: “HPD lab ana­lyst indicted on theft, tam­per­ing charges. His sus­pen­sion trig­gered a review of 200 nar­cotics cases he’d handled.”

June 17, 2007: “‘Trou­bling’ Cases Sur­face in Report on HPD Crime Lab; 1991 con­vic­tion for rape, mur­der has drawn the most concern.”

Jan­u­ary 5, 2006: “HPD Lab Probe Details More Lapses; Rev­e­la­tions show 2 divi­sions’ prob­lems amount to ‘near-total breakdown.’”

Decem­ber 18, 2005: “HPD’s lab’s trou­bles pre­date DNA test­ing; Experts’ review finds a pat­tern of prob­lems in 1980s stud­ies of blood samples.”

June 5, 2005: “Bit­ter pills; HPD ana­lysts faked drug evi­dence in four cases. How much more fraud has gone undetected?”

Novem­ber 5, 2003: “DNA evi­dence destroyed; par­dons called possible.”

June 25, 2003: “HPD ignored warn­ings, ex-lab man says; Retired offi­cial says he cited ‘train wreck.’”

April 3, 2003: “HPD chief pro­poses inde­pen­dently run crime lab.”

June 5, 2002: “Rape Kits; HPD strives to end ‘embar­rass­ment’ of untested DNA.”

How much longer until we fix the prob­lem? Since 2003, it’s been clear that the crime lab needs to be inde­pen­dent of the police depart­ment, and recently, Har­ris County took steps to cre­ate just such a regional lab. But so far, the city of Hous­ton hasn’t put in its share of the money. So HPD’s crime lab stays where it is. And the scan­dals keep coming.

Even in a tough econ­omy, jus­tice needs to be a city pri­or­ity. How many more out­rages are we will­ing to endure? How many rapists will we let roam the streets? How many wrong­ful con­vic­tions will we tol­er­ate? How much longer will we allow jus­tice to be denied?

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