HEADLINE: Sheriff's Office Acts To Protect Stored Evidence 
DRUG THEFT CHARGES SPUR POLICY CHANGE 

TAMPA - County Sheriff's Office has changed its drug evidence policies. 

Christopher Madiedo turned himself in Wednesday morning on a new round of charges and was released from jail about noon on $25,000 bail. The former deputy now faces 23 felony and six misdemeanor charges alleging he took drugs from the evidence room. 

During the past four years, Madiedo signed out 63 envelopes of drug evidence, saying he needed them for court, said sheriff's spokesman Rod Reder. In 20 of the envelopes the drugs had been removed. Some of the cases were his, but he had no role in others. 

Deputies will have to present a subpoena showing the case number to check out drugs. Deputies will be allowed to check out drugs on the day of court only and will have to return them that day. When returned, drugs will be weighed and tested. 

Authorities said Madiedo, 26, began taking the cocaine and marijuana in November 1997, a year and a half after he became a deputy, and continued until his resignation in June. He replaced cocaine with soap powder, marijuana with twigs and leaves and crack cocaine with wax, Reder said. 

The thefts were discovered after Madiedo was arrested July 1, the day after he resigned. Authorities said that hours after he quit, Madiedo returned to the office dressed as a deputy and signed out several envelopes of crack, powder cocaine and marijuana. Madiedo was arrested when he tried to return the envelopes filled with wax, soap powder and twigs and leaves. 

He was charged with drug possession, impersonating a law enforcement officer and having a gun. Madiedo was out of jail on $3,000 bail when prosecutors filed the 23 charges Tuesday. 

Prosecutors are reviewing the viability of criminal cases in which Madiedo is a witness or cases in which he checked out drugs. 

In his five years as a deputy, Madiedo was suspended three times: in 1997 for failing to appear for a subpoena, in 1998 after he shot a man in the buttock after a traffic stop, and in May as a result of a south Tampa bar fight. 

In April 2000, Madiedo said he was shot while patrolling near the University of South Florida but escaped serious injury because he was wearing a protective vest. 

HEADLINE: Deputy had easy access to drugs 

The procedure made it tantalizingly easy. Show up in uniform, sign your name and a case number on a form, walk out with drugs.

Sheriff's officials say that's what former Deputy Christopher Madiedo did repeatedly over four years, using the department's evidence room as his own candy jar for cocaine and marijuana.

Prosecutors charged him Tuesday with 23 counts of evidence tampering, trafficking in cocaine and cocaine possession. 

Madiedo checked drugs out so often and so easily because no one questioned what he was doing.

Until his arrest last month, the Hillsborough Sheriff's Office had few of the safeguards that other departments have had in place for years to prevent a corrupt officer from stealing narcotics from the evidence room.

No one verified what Madiedo was doing when he checked out drugs from the evidence room. No one made sure he was assigned to the cases he listed. Often, he wasn't.

Nearly 20 times he took out marijuana and returned twigs, or checked out cocaine and returned candle wax, authorities said. No one tested the substances he brought back.

The Sheriff's Office's book of procedures covers thousands of topics, but not this one.

"Just when you think you have covered all the basics, the unthinkable happens," sheriff's spokesman Lt. Rod Reder said. "Now we have something to cover this."

A week after the discovery, new policies were implemented. Now, an officer must show a subpoena to check out evidence. When an officer returns evidence, an official will weigh it and test it.

Other departments in the state adopted the safeguards long ago.

The Jacksonville Sheriff's Office requires deputies to present a subpoena or other official paperwork before retrieving evidence. Officials weigh and test returned evidence.

"That is something that we have been practicing for years," said Chief Bobby Drummond, who supervises the property room.

At the Tampa Police Department, evidence signed out for court by a property room supervisor must be signed back that day or turned over to the clerk of courts, spokeswoman Katie Hughes said.

"The officers are never allowed to keep it," she said.

At the Pinellas Sheriff's Office, only officials involved in a case can sign out evidence. "They must show a subpoena," said spokeswoman Marianne Pasha. "If they don't, we look it up with clerk of court."

But in Hillsborough, officials never anticipated that a deputy would steal drugs, Reder said.
Nationally, however, one of the most common sources of police corruption comes from the lure of drugs. About half of all FBI investigations into police corruption in 1997 centered on officers who succumbed to the illegal drug trade, according to a study by the U.S. General Accounting Office.

Hillsborough's evidence room has been the scene of previous problems. In 1999, the manager was charged with pocketing $ 90,000 in impounded cash. Her lawyer at the time said the manager "was appalled there was no accountability" in the room.

Sheriff's officials said at the time that they had increased oversight as a result.
"The evidence room has long been a castle, a bastion of security," Reder said. "(Madiedo) figured out a way to beat the system we had in place."

Madiedo had a troubled career with the department. He was suspended for 15 days in 1998 for shooting an unarmed motorist twice in the back. He also claimed to have been shot in May 2000 while pursuing a drug dealer. A bullet dented his protective vest but did not injure him. There were no witnesses, and no one has ever been arrested.

He was suspended again, this time for three days, after getting into a fight in December last year at a bar at closing time. He resigned in June and was arrested the next day after appearing at the evidence room to check out drugs.

The department randomly screens deputies for drugs. But despite his numerous disciplinary problems, Madiedo had never been tested in the five years he worked for the department.

In January, Madiedo married Margaret Mickler, the daughter of Joseph R. Mickler III, a pirate in the exclusive Ye Mystic Krewe of Gasparilla.

On Wednesday, he was booked at the Hillsborough County jail and released on $25,000 bail, slipping into a luxury car.

HEADLINE: Ex-Sansom Park police chief pleads guilty to stealing gun

FORT WORTH - Former Sansom Park Police Chief Ronnie Mackey has pleaded guilty to a charge of theft of a firearm by a public servant, and he was sentenced to two years' deferred probation, court records state.

If Mackey follows court-ordered probation guidelines for two years, the charge will be dropped and his record will show no conviction, defense attorney Bill Lane said.

Mackey decided to accept the plea Monday, a day before testimony was to begin in a trial in 396th state District Court.

Mackey was accused of stealing a handgun from the Sansom Park Police Department's property room. He has denied the accusation.

He was also accused of threatening the mayor and city employees, and he also denied that accusation.

The city fired Mackey in 1998 amid criticism that he was not carrying out city initiatives. He was arrested in 1999 on the theft charge.

Lane said prosecutors had approached him earlier with deals for longer probation, but Mackey turned them down. When prosecutors offered two years' probation, Mackey agreed, Lane said.
 

HEADLINE: Former BNE agent's conviction and life sentence upheld 

DATELINE: LOS ANGELES

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the drug conspiracy conviction and life sentence of former state narcotics agent Richard Wayne Parker. 

Parker, a former California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement agent from San Juan Capistrano, was convicted in 1999 for his role in the theft of 650 pounds of cocaine from a BNE evidence locker in Riverside and supplying South Bay drug dealers.  It was his second trial. The first ended in a deadlocked jury. 

In an unpublished opinion dated Aug. 1, the court rejected several defense complaints, including a claim that it was not allowed to use a controversial FBI agent in the second trial as a witness. The appellate court agreed with the trial judge that the defense simply wanted to question the agent on "irrelevant material." 

After Parker was convicted, Parker's half-brother, a California Highway Patrol officer, was arrested in connection with the cocaine heist. George Michael Ruelas of Temecula is still awaiting trial. 

HEADLINE: Former sheriff being sought in disappearance of items from evidence room 

SALLISAW, Okla. (AP) - Sequoyah County officials are looking for a former sheriff who allegedly pawned some guns stolen from the Haskell County Sheriff's office. 

An arrest warrant has been issued for ex-Haskell County Sheriff Jimmy E. Terrell, 52. Prosecutors have charged Terrell with two counts of false declaration of ownership to a pawnbroker 

Terrell, who resigned as Haskell County Sheriff in June 2000, is accused of pawning a Glock Model 22 375-caliber rifle in December 1999. He stated that he had owned the gun for a year and a half. 

Terrell also is accused of pawning a Browning High-Power 9mm pistol in January 2000, stating he had owned the gun for three years, records show. Both guns were taken to a Sallisaw pawn shop, court records state. 

On Friday, a Haskell County deputy served a search warrant at the pawn shop and recovered a Marlin Model 375 lever-action rifle which was allegedly stolen from the sheriff's department evidence room, according to a Sallisaw police report. That gun was also pawned by Terrell, the report states. 

Terrell was elected as sheriff in 1996 and began duties in January 1997. 

Present Haskell County Sheriff Manuel Ballard said items missing from the evidence room include computers, digital cameras and weapons. 

HEADLINE: Evidence Room Closed After Workers Become Ill

DATELINE: OLD EAST DALLAS

A police evidence room used to store seized drugs was temporarily closed Thursday after four police employees became sick while working in the facility, police said Thursday. Since May, the walk-in drug vault in a building on Baylor Street has been the source of complaints by workers concerned about the quality of the air in the room. 

At least three employees became sick this week, and four were hospitalized Thursday, said police spokeswoman Janice Houston. The four who became ill Thursday were treated at area hospitals. City environmental inspectors visited the building in May, and officials recommended hiring a consultant to perform tests. Tests are to be performed Friday. Results could be known Monday.