IAPE Evidence Blog

North Kit­sap Her­ald, northkitsapherald.com
Link to Arti­cle
Poulsbo, WA

Amanda M. Dixon arrives Sept, 28 for arraign­ment at Supe­rior Court, where she pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of firearms theft. Johnny Walker

POULSBO — Kit­sap County sheriff’s detec­tives, work­ing in con­junc­tion with Poulsbo police, have again arrested a for­mer Poulsbo police evi­dence clerk and charged her with theft.

The agen­cies announced Thurs­day that Amanda M. Dixon, 23, now of Kingston, was arrested Tues­day morn­ing at the Kit­sap County Cour­t­house where she was attend­ing pro­ceed­ings involv­ing her boyfriend, iden­ti­fied as Jacob J. Bryant, 22. She was booked into the Kit­sap County Jail on a charge of theft of a firearm. Bail was set at $50,000.

The firearm in ques­tion had been stored in the Poulsbo police evidence/property room and was reported as destroyed on May 12, 2011, accord­ing to Poulsbo police doc­u­ments. Dixon had signed depart­men­tal records indi­cat­ing that she had wit­nessed the gun’s destruc­tion. In fact, the gun turned up under the driver’s seat of Dixon’s vehi­cle, Sept. 18, when a Wash­ing­ton State Patrol trooper con­tacted the dri­ver of the vehi­cle involved in a col­li­sion on State High­way 3, in the Gorst area of South Kit­sap. That dri­ver was Bryant, the agen­cies reported.

The gun is a Rino Galesi (Italy) .22 cal­iber, semi-automatic hand­gun (model Rigarmi Hijo). The gun’s ser­ial num­ber appeared to have been removed inten­tion­ally. Bryant, a con­victed felon, is pro­hib­ited by law from pos­sess­ing any firearm. He was arrested and booked into jail for unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of a firearm, being a felon in pos­ses­sion of a firearm, and for a num­ber of nar­cotics and driver’s sta­tus offenses related to the col­li­sion inves­ti­ga­tion, the agen­cies reported.

Dixon recently was charged in court for theft of a firearm stem­ming from an inves­ti­ga­tion into the sim­i­lar dis­ap­pear­ance of a hand­gun from Poulsbo police evi­dence. That weapon, a Bryco Arms .380 cal­iber semi-automatic hand­gun, was located in a pri­vate res­i­dence where Dixon had lived. Dixon had signed police doc­u­ments that she had wit­nessed the gun’s destruc­tion on July 11, 2010.

It was turned over to Poulsbo police by her father on July 5, who found it among his daughter’s pos­ses­sions when she was mov­ing from his home.

Upon dis­cov­ery of this dis­crep­ancy, Poulsbo police requested assis­tance from the sheriff’s office in con­duct­ing an investigation.

Dur­ing the course of this first inves­ti­ga­tion, sheriff’s detec­tives devel­oped prob­a­ble cause to arrest Dixon. She was taken into cus­tody July 29 and booked into jail on a charge of theft of a firearm, with bail set at $100,000.

Dixon was released from cus­tody Aug. 1 on per­sonal recog­ni­zance, fol­low­ing an appear­ance in Kit­sap County Dis­trict Court (felony). Dixon had resigned from Poulsbo police employ­ment in June.

Aware of the pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tion into the stolen hand­gun from Poulsbo police evi­dence, the WSP trooper inves­ti­gat­ing the Sept. 18 col­li­sion involv­ing Bryant, dri­ving Dixon’s vehi­cle, con­tacted Poulsbo police and Kit­sap County sheriff’s detec­tives. The hand­gun found under the driver’s seat was turned over to the sheriff’s office. 

Poulsbo police pro­vided sheriff’s detec­tives with doc­u­men­ta­tion con­cern­ing the cus­tody, stor­age and reported destruc­tion of a num­ber of weapons that were no longer needed for evi­dence pur­poses. One of the firearms listed as being destroyed was a Rino Galesi .22 cal­iber semi­au­to­matic hand­gun with a five-digit ser­ial num­ber. Pho­tographs of the pis­tol showed it to be iden­ti­cal to the gun recov­ered from under­neath the driver’s seat of Dixon’s vehi­cle, the agen­cies reported.

This firearm was sub­mit­ted to the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol Crime Lab for foren­sic exam­i­na­tion. It was noted in the foren­sic report that the gun’s ser­ial num­ber was obliterated.

The report fur­ther noted that, while at the lab, the area of the hand­gun con­tain­ing the ser­ial num­ber was pol­ished and chem­i­cally treated (stan­dard restora­tion tech­niques) by foren­sic exam­in­ers which par­tially restored the ser­ial num­ber, less one com­plete digit of the five-digit num­ber. All other ser­ial num­ber dig­its matched those of the firearm that had report­edly been destroyed on May 12, the agen­cies reported.

Sheriff’s detec­tives were able to ascer­tain that no other hand­gun of this cal­iber, make/model, with a sim­i­lar ser­ial num­ber, had ever been reg­is­tered or reported as stolen.

Sheriff’s detec­tives were again able to estab­lish prob­a­ble cause to arrest Dixon for theft of a firearm and she was taken into custody.

Fol­low­ing an appear­ance in Kit­sap County Dis­trict Court (felony), Wednes­day, Dixon was released from cus­tody on per­sonal recog­ni­zance. The inves­ti­ga­tion continues.

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

Horvitz News­pa­pers, Penin­sula Daily News,peninsuladailynews.com
BYLINE: Arwyn Rice
Link to Article

Clal­lam County, WA

Staci Alli­son, left, sits in Clal­lam County Supe­rior Court on Tues­day. – Photo by Chris Tucker/Peninsula Daily News

PORT ANGELES — The trial of a woman accused of theft from the Clal­lam County Sheriff’s Office evi­dence room began Tues­day with sug­ges­tions from com­pet­ing attor­neys of greed, office infight­ing, a lack of super­vi­sory over­sight and sup­port — and a clut­tered, con­fus­ing evi­dence room.

Staci L. Alli­son, a for­mer evi­dence tech­ni­cian who now lives in Mon­te­sano, was charged with first-degree theft and money laun­der­ing in the dis­ap­pear­ance of more than $9,500, accord­ing to Assis­tant State Attor­ney Gen­eral Scott Mar­low dur­ing his open­ing state­ment Tuesday.

“The theme here, unfor­tu­nately, is one of greed, rec­og­niz­ing a weak­ness and tak­ing advan­tage of that weak­ness,” Mar­low said in his open­ing statement.

Pre­vi­ous reports said Alli­son was accused of steal­ing $8,644 from the sheriff’s evi­dence room.

As much as $51,251 in cash was found miss­ing from the evi­dence room in Novem­ber 2006.

Alli­son was charged with the lesser amount because that’s what pros­e­cu­tors believed they could prove she took.

Today’s tes­ti­mony from pros­e­cu­tion wit­nesses will begin at 9 a.m. in Supe­rior Court at the Clal­lam County Courthouse.

Alli­son was the evi­dence offi­cer for the Sheriff’s Office from 2003 through 2006 and was in charge of log­ging in, main­tain­ing and return­ing or destroy­ing evi­dence col­lected in crim­i­nal cases by sheriff’s deputies and detectives.

Novem­ber snowstorm

The case began in Nov. 27, 2006, when a snow­storm trapped Alli­son at home, and her super­vi­sor dis­cov­ered a bin full of empty or par­tially emp­tied cash evi­dence envelopes near Allison’s desk, Mar­low said.

The dis­cov­ery trig­gered an inves­ti­ga­tion by the State Police and led to Alli­son, who was one of only three peo­ple who had both a key and the secu­rity code to the evi­dence room, he said.

The focus of the pros­e­cu­tion will be on Allison’s actions in delet­ing com­puter records the day before a state audit of the evi­dence room, bank records that show unex­plained cash deposits and pay­day loan records, Mar­low told the jury.

The defense told a dif­fer­ent story.

Man­age­ment ‘a mess’

“The whole man­age­ment [of the sheriff’s depart­ment] was a mess,” in 2006, though it was improved from an ear­lier admin­is­tra­tion, said defense attor­ney Ralph W. Ander­son of Port Angeles.

“There were rival­ries. Sides were picked,” Ander­son said.

Allison’s super­vi­sor even kept a detailed list of Allison’s fail­ings, Ander­son said.

“She did her job, though there were those who were out to get her,” he said.

Ander­son told the jury that Allison’s big gap in pay­day loans came dur­ing a time when Alli­son couldn’t get new loans because of unpaid loans.

As for the com­puter sys­tem, it didn’t work right, and Alli­son was try­ing to delete and re-enter data in an attempt to get it to work, Ander­son said.

For­mer Sher­iff Joe Mar­tin lost his re-election bid to the present sher­iff, Bill Bene­dict, in Novem­ber 2006.

Three wit­nesses, each a mem­ber of the Clal­lam County Sheriff’s Depart­ment, took the stand Tuesday.

Direct super­vi­sor

Office Admin­is­tra­tive Coor­di­na­tor Chris James was Allison’s direct super­vi­sor in 2006.

James tes­ti­fied that she had been work­ing with Alli­son to resolve prob­lems with evi­dence room orga­ni­za­tion for six months, try­ing to clear up severe clut­ter that blocked the office’s safe.

Ander­son asked James if it would have been sim­pler to just go in and clean the room.

“I didn’t want to micro-manage,” James said.

James said she pre­ferred to help Alli­son resolve the prob­lem her­self, but Nov. 27, when the snow­storm trapped Alli­son at home and James in the office, she took the time to clear Allison’s per­sonal items from evi­dence shelves, to be replaced with evi­dence on the floor in front of the safe.

“The evi­dence room is for evi­dence,” she said.

The order for per­sonal items to be removed from the room came from Chief Admin­is­tra­tive Deputy Alice Hoffman.

Blue bin

Dur­ing the process, James found a blue Rub­ber­maid bin full of cash evi­dence envelopes, she said.

She imme­di­ately informed Hoff­man, who told her to find out why the cash evi­dence was not in the safe, she said.

Ander­son asked if she had noticed the bin earlier.

James said no, she had not noticed it before that day.

Ander­son also ques­tioned James about a long, detailed list of Allison’s “short­com­ings,” includ­ing the report of a per­sonal phone call while on duty.

That list was never entered into Allison’s per­son­nel file, which meant she had shown improve­ment on those items, James said.

List com­mon practice

Hoff­man tes­ti­fied that the list was com­mon prac­tice, that super­vi­sors were expected to doc­u­ment prob­lems for weekly meetings.

Hoff­man said no one could have entered the evi­dence room with­out the key and a code.

Chief Crim­i­nal Deputy Ron Cameron tes­ti­fied on the state of the evi­dence room that morn­ing and how it was dis­cov­ered that money was missing.

He said he had gone to the evi­dence room to get a key, but it was not where it belonged.

After a search in which James became “ani­mated” over the con­di­tion of the evi­dence room, James pulled out a blue bin and showed him the con­tents, Cameron said.

When James pulled an enve­lope out of the bin, some change fell out, which should be impos­si­ble for a sealed piece of evi­dence, Cameron testified.

Oth­ers were found to be opened, and the area was declared a crime scene, Cameron said.

Cameron took the keys of the two key­hold­ers in the office, had the elec­tronic alarm code changed and began the inves­ti­ga­tion, he said.

On cross-examination by Ander­son, Cameron said that in the past six months, he had been in the evi­dence room a few times and had not seen the blue bin before that day.

“So you can’t say how long those envelopes had been that way,” Ander­son asked.

“No,” Cameron replied.

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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360 – 417-3535 or at arwyn.rice@peninsuladailynews.com.

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