Former Cottage Grove police officer pleads guilty to stealing meth from evidence room

A Cottage Grove evidence coordinator first reported suspicions about Beach in May 2015, noting he would access the evidence locker more than any other officer and often for no specific reason.

August 30, 2019

A former Cottage Grove police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to stealing drugs from a police evidence room.

Phillip Allan Beach, 49, entered a guilty plea to knowingly and intentionally obtaining possession of a controlled substance by misrepresentation and fraud. He appeared in federal court in Eugene and remains out of custody pending sentencing.

A Cottage Grove evidence coordinator first reported suspicions about Beach in May 2015, noting he would access the evidence locker more than any other officer and often for no specific reason.

He'd enter the evidence room, not sign anything out but often touched an evidence bag in a case that already had been declined for prosecution, according to an FBI agent's affidavit. A commander found the bag slightly open and some methamphetamine missing.

Investigators then placed two hidden cameras inside the evidence room.

On June 11, 2015, Beach was recorded on video entering the evidence room, accessing the same evidence bag, removing a plastic baggie from his pocket, opening the evidence bag and placing both hands inside before returning his plastic baggie to his pocket. A commander later weighed that evidence bag and found a 7.3-gram reduction in the meth it held, the affidavit said.

Further investigation revealed that between March 2010 and June 2015 Beach had accessed numerous evidence bags from other cases that were either missing substantial grams of methamphetamine or were replaced with salt, FBI agent William M. Soule wrote in the affidavit.

Beach indicated at times that he was taking drugs from the evidence locker to send to the crime lab for testing, but no drugs were sent, Soule noted.

Beach was suspended June 11, 2015, and Oregon State Police was asked to investigate. The Lane County District Attorney's Office transferred the case to the FBI and U.S. Attorney's Office for prosecution.

State records show Beach was fired as a Cottage Grove police officer on July 15, 2015.

He could face up to four years in prison, a $250,000 fine and one year of supervised release when he's sentenced Nov. 26.

-- Maxine Bernstein