IAPE Evidence Blog

Charleston Daily Mail
BYLINE: Ry Rivard
Link to Article

Charleston, WV

Troop­ers at four W.Va. loca­tions unable to prove they destroyed drugs

Apr. 13 — CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Some State Police detach­ments in south­ern West Vir­ginia have failed to main­tain small quan­ti­ties of con­fis­cated drugs and are at times unable to doc­u­ment the proper dis­posal of the drugs, accord­ing to an audit released Mon­day by the Leg­isla­tive Auditor’s Office.

Audi­tors vis­ited the evi­dence rooms of five ran­domly selected police detach­ments between the sum­mers of 2008 and 2009.

At four of them, troop­ers had failed to main­tain small quan­ti­ties of drugs or para­pher­na­lia. Troop­ers ini­tially took the drugs in rela­tion to mis­de­meanor pos­ses­sion charges. The quan­ti­ties involved are less than 15 grams.

All of the detach­ments where prob­lems were found were in the south­west­ern part of the state and were over­seen by the same regional group, Troop 6.

State law requires inves­ti­ga­tors to con­tact pros­e­cu­tors to deter­mine whether evi­dence must be retained, released to the owner or destroyed.

Troop­ers also were unable to pro­vide audi­tors with doc­u­men­ta­tion to sup­port the dis­posal of drugs from the evi­dence rooms of the Rich­wood and Prince­ton detachments.

At Rich­wood, audi­tors found seven items listed on crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion reports that were not located in the evi­dence room and that troop­ers could not pro­vide doc­u­men­ta­tion for the destruc­tion of. The items included four glass bowls with residue; one snort tube with residue; .12 grams of mar­i­juana; and mar­i­juana seeds and .5 grams of marijuana.

Sim­i­larly, in Prince­ton, audi­tors listed three items — two hydrocodone pills; 10 other muscle-relaxing pills; and pea-size rock of crack– that were miss­ing and lacked dis­posal records.

State law requires appro­pri­ate destruc­tion doc­u­men­ta­tion from the court and a record of the time, date and man­ner of the destruc­tion of drugs.

State Police Super­in­ten­dent Tim­o­thy Pack told audi­tors the pro­ce­dure for destruc­tion of mis­de­meanor evi­dence varies from county to county and is deter­mined by the prosecutor’s office in each county, accord­ing to the report.

He also told audi­tors that he believes no troop­ers to be using the mis­de­meanor quan­ti­ties of drugs because the depart­ment per­forms peri­odic drug testing.

He also told audi­tors that drug residue has no value or use.

Audi­tors also found indi­ca­tions that $270,000 worth of live mar­i­juana plants at the Jesse detach­ment in Wyoming County had been seized and were said to have been destroyed. But audi­tors found troop­ers did not pro­vide evi­dence that the plants had been destroyed.

“While the erad­i­ca­tion prac­tices may not require doc­u­men­ta­tion of erad­i­ca­tion, with­out proper doc­u­men­ta­tion we were unable to deter­mine if the plants were prop­erly destroyed and not used for other pur­poses,” the audi­tors found.

Besides the Jesse detach­ment, audi­tors vis­ited the Hin­ton detach­ment, which is in Troop 6.

Audi­tors did not find sim­i­lar drug evidence-handling prob­lems at the Bureau of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tions Head­quar­ters in Kanawha County, which is cov­ered by Troop 4.

A spokesman for the State Police did not imme­di­ately return a mes­sage seek­ing com­ment Mon­day evening.

Con­tact writer Ry Rivard at ry.rivard@dailymail.com or 304 – 348-1796.

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

News and Sen­tinel, newsandsentinel.com
BYLINE: NATALEE SEELY
Link to Article

Wood County, WV

PARKERSBURG — An inves­ti­ga­tion into nearly $8,000 of miss­ing for­fei­ture money from the evi­dence room of the Wood County Sheriff’s Office is still ongo­ing, but mea­sures have been taken to pre­vent sim­i­lar inci­dents from hap­pen­ing in the future, an offi­cial said.

The money was dis­cov­ered miss­ing dur­ing a 2009 audit of the sheriff’s office for the 2008 fis­cal year. The audit was com­pleted in Novem­ber. A crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion was imme­di­ately requested by out­side law enforce­ment agen­cies and is still in progress, said Wood County Sher­iff Jeff Sandy.

Sandy said Wednes­day the $7,949.24 was for­fei­ture money from pre­vi­ous inves­ti­ga­tions, but had noth­ing to do with the Park­ers­burg Nar­cotics Task Force.

Accord­ing to the audit report, the funds were used as petty cash. A log book showed the last activ­ity to be in June 2005.

Pos­si­ble leads into the inves­ti­ga­tion were not dis­closed by the sheriff.

“As with all ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions, I can­not com­ment on this case,” said Sandy.

To pre­vent sim­i­lar inci­dents from hap­pen­ing in the future, changes were made to improve effi­ciency in all areas of the sheriff’s office, Sandy said.

A spe­cial law enforce­ment fund was cre­ated fol­low­ing the audit for for­fei­ture money, said Sandy.

“We have imple­mented a sep­a­ra­tion of duties,” he said. “Indi­vid­u­als who are autho­rized to write checks are not the same indi­vid­u­als who make the deposits.”

Locked cash boxes were imple­mented at tax deputy work sta­tions. All checks wait­ing to be processed in tax oper­a­tions are now stored in locked cash boxes, he said.

An account­ing and track­ing sys­tem was estab­lished for items in the evi­dence room using speadsheets.

“Every sin­gle item in the audit we addressed 100 per­cent,” said Sandy.

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