Guns, other evidence missing, sample audit says

The Asheville Citizen-Times (North Carolina)
BYLINE: Joel Burgess

Asheville, NC

Police have lost track of at least 27 guns seized as evidence, along with dozens of packages of cash and drugs, according to audit findings released Monday.

The Police Department audit - and a separate case in which 397 pills of the prescription painkiller oxycodone pills were discovered missing - have triggered a review of all 13,889 evidence room items deemed high-risk, authorities said.

The audit sampled about 10 percent of items logged as evidence from as far back as 1993.

Police ordered the review after the city's longtime evidence room manager was disciplined in January for unspecified reasons and resigned 31 days later.

The missing items could derail an untold number of criminal cases and will at the least delay thousands of court proceedings, Buncombe County District Attorney Ron Moore said.

It also will cause the release on bond of dozens of people being held on weapons and other charges, he said. With the evidence room sealed during the investigation, prosecutors do not have access to existing evidence to use in court.

Moore released the results of the sample audit Monday in a memo to all defense attorneys practicing in Buncombe County.

In the memo, Moore simply noted that he was attaching a letter he received from Police Chief Bill Hogan at 4:45 p.m. Friday.

He also included letters from the auditor - former Asheville police Maj. Ross Robinson, an instructor with the N.C. Justice Academy - to Hogan.

"And there are some disturbing numbers in that memo," Moore said.

Of 1,097 guns, drugs and packets of money and valuables sampled, 115 items are unaccounted for, Robinson said in the letter to Hogan.

That broke down to 34 packets of money and valuables, 27 guns and 54 containers of drugs.

"Obviously, we have not accounted for all the items we were looking for," Robinson said in the letter.

He did not give more details, including the type of missing guns and drugs.

Hogan said the sample audit results did not necessarily mean the guns or drugs were back on the street. Robinson originally noted 161 items missing, including 46 guns, but some were later found.

"What it says to us is, we need to do the full audit and get to the bottom of it and find out what is there and isn't there," Hogan said.

Some of the items also could have been destroyed, he said. In his letter, Robinson noted that 38 missing containers of drugs had identification numbers that were sequential.

"I recall speculation ... that items (sequentially) preceding and following these items were destroyed, simply not documented," he said.

Robinson also noted several other problems with the way evidence was kept and made suggestions for improving the system.

The system used for keeping track of evidence includes "old" and "new" systems that at times overlap and make items difficult to find, he said.

Daily accounting should also be done to "close the loop" on evidence taken by officers to court, he said.

"I noted in one case that drug evidence in a federal task force had been removed by an APD officer and apparently taken to federal court. While I am sure the evidence is secure with the clerk of court, there is not a timely determination when the evidence is accounted for by the court and no longer by the police department," he said.

And he suggested that when evidence is destroyed, that it be witnessed by a third party.

In his letter to Moore, Hogan said they would make the suggested changes.

"It is my intention to develop improved audit techniques that include opening evidence packages to verify the contents during an audit and to ensure that evidence is intact," he wrote. "When we dispose of evidence in the future we will have outside witnesses to verify the destruction to include opening all packages of evidence to ensure that the evidence is intact before it is destroyed."

In the sample audit, bags and containers were not opened but were instead identified by number.

Hogan said the full audit will be more thorough in that auditors will break "integrity seals" and open bags to actually see the items inside. The audit will be done by someone outside the department and could start as soon as this week, the chief said.

Police started the sample audit at the request of Moore after the district attorney learned of the resignation of evidence and property manager William Lee Smith on Feb. 18.

Smith worked in the evidence room since 1991, but was put on paid investigative suspension on Jan. 25. State personnel laws prevent officials from saying why Smith was suspended or why he resigned.

After Moore requested the audit, he and a defense attorney on April 1 discovered the 397 missing oxycodone tablets. The pills were key evidence in the district attorney's case against drug suspect Terry Lee Landrum.

With the oxycodone pills missing, prosecutors were forced to drop drug trafficking charges that carried up to 225 months in prison. Instead, Landrum pleaded guilty to possession with intent to sell and deliver a controlled substance and possession of a firearm by a felon. He received probation.

Moore later learned that police were doing only a sample audit and that early results had turned up missing evidence.

He criticized the department for not doing a full audit and not telling him about the early results.

He has asked the State Bureau of Investigation to help look into problems with the evidence room and requested that police seal off the old evidence room.

Hogan defended police actions, saying that when the performed the sample audit they were following guidelines by the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies Inc., which accredits some of the country's largest police departments.

Under CALEA guidelines, when a sample audit shows an error rate of 4 percent, a full audit is done.Hogan said that he did not tell Moore about the early results showing missing items because the sample was not done.

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