Aussie cops lose siezed drugs worth millions

[Nostalgia]

The Victorian Ombudsman is investigating claims that seized drugs worth millions of dollars are missing from the police forensic science laboratory.

An internal police audit has found drugs listed as destroyed years ago have been kept, and chemicals that should have been stored are missing.

The failure to maintain stringent chain of evidence standards has the potential to have an impact on several coming trials.

Potentially volatile chemicals, seized from drug raids over several years, are stored in a separate brick building at the rear of the Macleod laboratory and have not been subjected to the usual exhibit management standards.

Senior police have admitted privately they are unable to say whether the missing drugs have been destroyed, are lost or were stolen. A full audit would require checking thousands of computer page entries against lists of drugs and chemicals meant to have been destroyed.

"The truth is we will never know. Many cases go back years and it is impossible to find out what really happened in each case," one senior policeman said.

The now disbanded Ceja corruption taskforce investigated claims that seized drugs were recycled by the former drug squad and either sold or given to informers as a reward for information. One former Ceja investigator said there were suspicions at the time that some seized drugs were not destroyed as required by law.

Two previous police audits of the forensic unit have left the problem unresolved.

The Ombudsman — rather than the Office of Police Integrity — is overseeing the investigation because it involves unsworn scientific and administrative staff rather than sworn police.

Police sources said that despite several warnings in recent years that the audit, storage and maintenance of seized drugs was inadequate, there have been no substantial improvements.

The Ombudsman's investigation began after it received information from within the police force that there was a serious problem with the handling and storage of drugs in the Macleod facility.

Ombudsman investigators have taken the allegations seriously enough to register a person within the police department with vital information as a protected internal source.

Police have twice received information relating to plans by organised crime figures and corrupt police to infiltrate the secure forensic science drugs unit.

In 1991 police discovered that 10 kilograms of an amphetamine chemical had been switched with red tile grout after it had been seized by police. Later police found that drug squad detective Kevin Hicks organised several burglaries on the Attwood police storage area to allow criminals to steal back seized chemicals.

Hicks was later sentenced to a minimum of five years' jail after pleading guilty to theft, bribery and burglary charges.

A spokeswoman for the Ombudsman's Office refused to comment. "We cannot provide any information at all," she said.

Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon's spokesman said: "As this is a whistleblower matter we will not be making any further comment."

Judges and magistrates have repeatedly criticised the delays in obtaining drug analysis reports, but police say this is due to chronic understaffing in the specialist scientific unit.

Police are conducting a separate inquiry into DNA procedures after a murder case collapsed last month.

Deputy Commissioner Simon Overland said the inquiry would review 7000 DNA cases after a sample resulting in a man being charged over the murders of mother and daughter Margaret and Seana Tapp in 1984, was found to be tainted.

The charges against the man were dropped when it was discovered the DNA evidence was worthless.

The unit also came under fire from police, lawyers and the judiciary at the height of the Purana gangland prosecutions because of delays of up to 12 months in obtaining drug test results.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4701413a12.html

[ZingPao]

This seems to be a common practice. The law uses and sells drugs while imprisoning their own people for it. The hypocrisy really makes me sick.