Dear IAPE Member, I would like to personally thank all of our members for their patience during the very recent move of our Association's offices to Southern California. As of March first, the vast majority of our technical and logistical problems related to the move have been overcome, and we are once again in full-service operation for you. As you may have read in the last issue of the Evidence Log, our first two classes of 1997 are scheduled for Lexington, KY in April, and San Diego, CA in June. We now have finalized classes in Arlington, TX in October, and Ashland, OR in July, and are concluding details for classes in the Seattle area in July, and in Virginia in December. Primary ongoing goals of IAPE are to furnish members with the most comprehensive training available, and the type of information needed to effectively operate and manage property rooms. In addition, we will share case studies in which absent or inadequate management controls, audits or inventories have disgraced and embarrassed law enforcement agencies across the country. These case studies need to be shared with our agency supervisors, managers and administrators to help them understand and appreciate the complexities, liabilities and inherent problems in an agency's property function. The case studies are not intended to embarrass anyone, but to educate property room personnel and those who oversee the function, no matter what type or size agency, or what region of the country. It is IAPE' s goal to ensure that every law enforcement administrator is aware of his or her responsibility to make property rooms an integral part of the organization, and the disastrous personal and department consequences for failing to do so. Over the years, a substantial number of property officers from across the county have expressed their perception that law enforcement administrators aren't interested in property room management until the mysterious disappearance of a critical piece of evidence. Frequently the administrator's first notification is in the press, but when that headline hits and the property room becomes the center of media attention, the top administrator is thrust into accepting his or her responsibility for it. As a 25-year law enforcement manager with over a dozen years experience managing a property room and presenting evidence handling seminars, I have continually tried to get the word out to police leaders regarding the importance of the property room. Unfortunately, that is frequently best done by sharing with them some of the tragedies that our profession has suffered in the past few years. Those include the loss of $31 million in drugs stolen from a jail cell being used as a Police Department property room in Texas, the murder of two Arizona narcotics officers in a property room by an off duty deputy who was burglarizing the facility, the swearing in ceremony of a police chief in Massachusetts while he was under the influence of narcotics taken from his department's drug locker, and the case of over 3,000 guns missing from a major East Coast police department. Do property function problems deserve top management attention? You bet they do! 
Copyright © 1997 International Association for Property and Evidence, Inc. Reprinted from the Evidence Log, Volume 1997, Number 1, Page 2 |
