HEADLINE: DEPUTY QUITS, DRUGS MISSING 

TAMPA -- A Hillsborough County deputy sheriff quit his job and then went to the department's evidence room where he signed out cocaine and marijuana while still in uniform, authorities said. Investigators said Sunday they were trying to determine how much crack cocaine, powder cocaine and marijuana Christopher Madiedo signed out Friday right after he quit. Madiedo, 26, remained jailed Sunday on $21,000 bail. He was charged with impersonating a police officer, drug possession and evidence tampering 

HEADLINE: Jail trusty destroys evidence State police drop 5 cases compromised by break-in

CLINTON -- When jailhouse trusty Travis Tacker dipped into evidence bags looking for marijuana last month, he effectively handed five individuals a free pass from criminal prosecution.
The five include a family of three, each charged with a Class Y felony, for which each could have received a life sentence in connection with methamphetamine charges.

Tacker had ripped open the bags, and in several cases mixed the evidence, preventing Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Stephen James from pursuing those cases.

One case already has been dropped. All charges against the family and one other person also will be dropped, James said. 

The evidence tampering highlights numerous problems at the Van Buren County jail, where trusties often go unsupervised for long periods. Sheriff Russell Pridgen has ordered an internal investigation into the trusty abuses, and the Quorum Court plans its own fact-finding mission.

"It's bad, don't get me wrong, but it could have been worse," Pridgen said of the evidence tampering, adding some of the evidence came from cases long resolved.

It was bad enough for James, who told the Arkansas State Police to stop storing evidence at the sheriff's office after the break-in. James said he's still worried about evidence the sheriff's office has gathered in county cases.

"How can you not worry when the same people are keeping it who were keeping it before and trusties are still unsupervised?" James said.

The state police now keep evidence in Harrison, an hour-and-15 minute drive away.

"We're upset that this happened, but this is not the only department this has happened to," state police investigator Ken Whillock said. "Other departments have had their evidence locker tampered with."

Whillock did not specify which law enforcement agencies he was referring to.

JAIL PROBLEMS

Tacker admitted on June 22 to helping himself to marijuana inside a tin shed behind the jail used to hold criminal evidence. The prosecuting attorney's office finished reviewing all the affected cases Wednesday. Other cases might be challenged by defense attorneys, James said, but all bags that showed obvious signs of tampering have been accounted for. James charged the 20-year-old Tacker with breaking and entering, theft of property, second-degree escape, tampering with physical evidence and possession of a controlled substance in connection with the break-in. Tacker is currently serving a sentence with the Arkansas Department of Correction for violating his probation. He was awaiting transfer to the Department of Correction when he broke into the evidence shed.

Abuses at the jail include trusties converting a storage shed into a video room equipped with a VCR, two microwaves and an air-conditioning unit; a bed set up in the woods where Tacker claimed he had sex with his wife; and trusties ordering car parts and cans of ether on the county tab.

One trusty admitted the part he ordered was for his own vehicle. Ether, which is used to start diesel engines, also can be used in the production of methamphetamine.

The trusty abuses came during a tough first six months in office for Pridgen. Since he took office in January, the following has occurred:

An intoxicated Act 309 prisoner stole a patrol car and crashed it.

In a related incident, jailer P.K. Blevins was dismissed in March and accused of providing inmates alcohol.

A mass breakout planned for April 1 was narrowly foiled.

In the most recent violation, Tacker broke into the back side of the evidence storage shed, unscrewing a piece of tin siding and bending it back to get inside.

The shed contained evidence from state police investigations and from six sheriff's office cases. All the sheriff's office cases had been prosecuted at the time of the break-in, Pridgen said. "Half that evidence should have been destroyed, more than half," he said. "Some were from cases going back to 1996." Of the state police cases, two were against men charged with possession of drug paraphernalia. The two had been seen dumping a fire extinguisher containing anhydrous ammonia into the woods. Anhydrous ammonia is used to make of methamphetamine, and it is illegal to carry it in an unauthorized container. Lab tests failed to find evidence of a controlled substance, however. The other three cases involved the family charged with possession of methamphetamine with intent to distribute, which carries a sentence of 10 to 40 years, or a possible life sentence.

Robert James Upchurch, Robert James Upchurch Jr. and Sandra Upchurch also were charged with conspiracy to manufacture methamphetamine. Neither they nor their attorney could be reached for comment.

JAIL CHALLENGES

Pridgen said he will ensure evidence tampering does not happen again at his office.
The county no longer keeps evidence in the storage shed. "We moved ours that day [of the break-in]. That was it, we put all ours in that little broom closet," Pridgen said, referring to a locked storage closet inside the sheriff's office. But Pridgen said he can't fix the problems by himself.

The Quorum Court cut this year's budget below that of the previous year, Pridgen said, making him even more reliant on trusty labor for building and vehicle maintenance. The jail averages between 30 and 40 inmates on any given day.

The budget cuts also make it impossible to keep a guard on the trusties when they work outside the jail -- his office just can't afford the expense out of its $ 796,277 annual budget, he said.

The jail needs a perimeter fence to prevent trusties from wandering off into the woods, Pridgen said, and he intends to ask the Quorum Court for more funding to pay for it.

Justice of the Peace Ernie Atkins said he and other Quorum Court members plan to visit the sheriff's office. "The people here elect a sheriff and assume he's going to take care of business, but that's not always the case," he said.

Pridgen has invited the Quorum Court members to visit before. "I will show them where my deficiencies are and where I need money. That's it," he said.

Atkins said, "County officials are] accusing us of being investigators instead of legislators, but it helps us to legislate if we know what is going on."

The Quorum Court plans to question the sheriff about the evidence shed break-in at its July 19 meeting.

Meanwhile, the trusties' makeshift video room -- where they had set out mats to lie on, installed an old air-conditioning unit and had copies of videos ranging from The Dukes of Hazard to Rocky II and Rocky III -- has been remodeled back into a storage room. "I have cracked down as much as I can," Pridgen said.

He admits the trusties can do almost whatever they wish if they aren't supervised. Tacker, for instance, hid his stolen marijuana under a rock in the nearby woods, investigators said. "I had two cars go down, one with a transmission, one with a rear end out -- the differential -- so they're [trusties] working on the vehicles."

HEADLINE: Evidence-room cash gone; clerk arrested 

HOT SPRINGS -- A clerk at the Hot Springs Police Department was fired and arrested after investigators learned that about $ 20,000 was missing from the evidence room.

Lelma Ruth Tyler, 62, was charged Wednesday with theft of over $ 2,500. 

Tyler had worked at the department for 23 years. Police checked Wednesday morning for some confiscated cash that was supposed to be in the property room and learned that $ 290 was missing. An investigation revealed more cash was gone.

Police said Tyler admitted taking money from the room, saying she would repay it after a traffic-accident settlement came through. Police Chief Gary Ashcraft said Tyler was a fixture at the department and that he was stunned by her arrest.

"You'd never believe it in a million years," Ashcraft said. Tyler was released on a $ 5,000 cash bond and has a July 24 court date.

HEADLINE: Disgraced ex-LAPD officer transferred to state prison 

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES 

At the request of a judge, authorities transferred disgraced former police officer Rafael Perez from a county jail facility to a state prison Friday to hasten his release from custody. 

Superior Court Judge Robert Perry on Thursday ordered that Perez be turned over to state prison officials immediately so that he could begin earning "good time-work time" credits. The credits trim one day off a sentence for each day served while doing prison work without disciplinary problems. 

Perez was transferred from the Century Regional Detention Facility in Lynwood to the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi. 

"He's in our security housing unit. That's the highest level of attention we can give anybody," said Paul Woodley, a spokesman for the prison located about 115 miles north of Los Angeles. 

Perez, 33, was placed in the high-security unit for his own protection, Woodley said. 
Perez's lawyer, Winston Kevin McKesson, asked the court Thursday to release his client immediately. 

Perez had been serving time in the county facility, where the state gives credit at the reduced rate of one day for every two days in custody. 

Perez was arrested in August 1998 for stealing $1 million worth of cocaine from an evidence room. After a trial that ended in a jury deadlock, he agreed in September 1999 to plead guilty and cooperate with investigators in exchange for leniency. He was sentenced the following February to five years in prison. 

Perez ignited a scandal after he alleged wrongdoing in the department, including assaults and frame-ups by the anti-gang unit in which he worked in the city's tough Rampart area. However, he has never testified in court against other officers. 

When it came time to consider his release under terms of a plea agreement, authorities from the district attorney's office, the Sheriff's Department and the state Department of Corrections said Perez had not earned enough credits for release because he never entered the state system. 

Perry said the agencies' position was unfair to Perez, who counted on being released early for cooperating as an informant in a police scandal. Perry reluctantly refused to release Perez, but ordered his transfer to a state facility. 

All parties in Perez's sentencing case were ordered back to court July 23 and the judge said the sheriff must then show cause why Perez should not be released. 

HEADLINE:  Justice Dept: FBI Missing Computers

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

More than 180 computers, at least one containing classified material, are missing from the FBI along with some 450 weapons, officials said Tuesday. 

A total of 184 laptops are missing, including 13 that are believed to have been stolen, officials said. They said that in addition to one known computer containing classified information, three others that are missing might also have classified material. 

As for the weapons, some 184 weapons were stolen and 265 were lost, said officials, discussing the problem on condition of anonymity. They said some of the weapons were used in crimes. 

The revelation came on the eve of an FBI oversight hearing on Capitol Hill at which bureau whistleblowers were scheduled to testify. The FBI has been under fire for weeks for missteps, including the failure to provide defense lawyers for Timothy McVeigh with thousands of pages of evidence documents in the Oklahoma City bombing case. 

That problem forced a postponement of McVeigh's scheduled May 16 execution for the crime, and he was put to death by lethal injection on June 11. 

In connection with the problem disclosed Tuesday, Attorney General John Ashcroft has asked the Justice Department's inspector general to do a department-wide review of inventory controls over guns and other law enforcement equipment. 

The weapons that are missing are mostly sidearms, officials said, but also include submachine guns. 

Questions about the missing equipment are sure to surface at Wednesday's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the committee's chairman, opened oversight hearings on the FBI earlier this year after a series of high-profile mistakes, including the missing evidence in the McVeigh case and the discovery that veteran agent FBI agent Robert Hanssen spied for Moscow for years. Hanssen pleaded guilty to several counts of espionage on July 6 and is to be sentenced in January. 

Wednesday's hearing, with FBI agents including Assistant Director Robert Dies and Deputy Assistant Director Kenneth Senser scheduled to testify, was to focus on the FBI's management but now will likely be dominated by questions about the missing guns and computers. 

About 13 of the missing weapons had been used in crimes, mostly robberies, FBI officials said. 
Bureau officials said that, altogether, the FBI has roughly 50,000 guns and 13,000 computers. 

The FBI has determined that 66 weapons were lost in connection with a retired agent and about four were carried by agents who were either fired or died, officials said. 

They also said that that some weapons apparently were lost during training operations with other law enforcement agencies _ and said that laptops sometimes are lost as they are passed around from office to office. 

The missing computers and weapons were discovered during a comprehensive inventory of equipment undertaken at the behest of the Department of Justice following the recent series of problems at the FBI. 

FBI officials said Tuesday the bureau tracks lost weapons, but also said this was first time that a serious effort was mounted to try to get a total accounting of missing equipment from all FBI field offices. 

This is not the first time the federal government has misplaced computers with sensitve information on it. The State Department misplaced a laptop with highly classified information in early 2000. 

The guns and computers reported missing Tuesday represent equipment that has been lost, stolen or otherwise unaccounted for over the last 11 or 12 years, FBI officials said. 

The FBI has ordered all field offices to do a comprehensive inventory of all equipment worth over $500 by Sept. 30. Components that fail to make the deadline could see their appropriations withheld, officials said. 

They also said the bureau will open criminal investigations into what happened to weapons that were given to some agents who have retired or been fired. 

News of missing FBI equipment follows a Justice Department inspector general's report last March showing that the Immigration and Naturalization Service couldn't find some 540 weapons. 

Justice Department officials said that 44 of the INS guns were found, 130 are considered lost or stolen and 119 were incorrectly reported as missing. The INS is looking into what happened to the other 246 weapons. 

HEADLINE: OFFICERS KEEP LOCK ON EVIDENCE 

It's a drunken man's paradise. It's an armory. And it is home to the how and what of Aiken crimes.

In two small tucked-away rooms, the Aiken Department of Public Safety's evidence chambers hold things criminals wished didn't exist. 

The hallway that leads to the bigger of the two rooms sets the tone."There's tons of beer in here," said Dwayne Courtney, Aiken's chief investigator, whose department oversees evidence, as he passes a blue recycle bin full of wine bottles.

Next to the box, stacked five high, are boxes of Heineken. Next to them, a stack of Coors Light, with Miller Lite on the side. All confiscated, most will end up for sale.

Shelves 8 feet high hold paper bags of stolen credit cards and tools of the criminal trade. Paper allows evidence to breathe, Investigator Courtney said.

What can't fit in bags is a story in itself. A basket full of faded rose petals. A metal detector. A floor jack. A half-empty bottle of Smirnoff.

The room is filling, and soon the agency will have to search for more space to hold the materials that get convictions.

To help keep pace, the agency resells the alcohol to anyone with a beer or wine license. They also use confiscated money from drug crimes to buy drug-fighting tools. Guns are sent away to be melted down.

Although things do pile up in this criminal library, the rooms don't catalog the full history of Aiken crime.

Most evidence is kept for a short time - usually about 90 days after appeals for those convicted are exhausted.

The national accreditation standards that govern the agency mandate that evidence be removed within six months after the courts have finished with a criminal trial, Investigator Courtney said.

But homicide evidence is kept until the person convicted is dead or released from prison. 
Noticeable from the doorway are two boxes labeled "Jessica Carpenter," the teen who was slain last summer in her Aiken home.The smaller of the two rooms holds the items that need more security.

There are boxes of guns, jewelry, cash and a cast-iron frying pan. The pan is from a homicide case, Investigator Courtney said.In this room is more alcohol - a clear liquid in a gallon jug - moonshine, Mr. Courtney explained.

Evidence-handling at the agency is a strict process. Officers bring in evidence to an area similar to a bank deposit security box, located in an opening in the wall next to the evidence rooms.

Only one person, a part-time evidence technician, has keys to that the opening and to the rooms.

For about a year, Melissa Odenthal has used a bar-coding system that has made locating evidence easier. The system is funded by a federal grant. Before the bar codes, evidence could be hard to find quickly. "We have had some tense moments," Investigator Courtney said. "But I don't know if we have ever lost an item of evidence."

To make sure nothing comes up missing, about six random inspections are done every year.

Evidence also is protected from acts of nature. The rooms sit behind concrete walls that once marked boundaries of holding cells in the old city jail.

Tornadoes might leave their evidence behind, but they will not take police evidence with them.

"If a tornado comes, those evidence lockers are still going to be there," Investigator Courtney said.