HUB POLICE DRUG PROBE BROADENS

Thefts Suspected; Staff at Depository Is Shifted

All 10 officers working in the Boston Police Department's central
drug warehouse have been transferred to other duties, because
anticorruption investigators believe that evidence is being stolen,
officials said yesterday.

For now, only department auditors and investigators from the Internal
Affairs Division who are working on the case will be allowed into the
Hyde Park depository, where drugs seized as evidence in thousands of
cases are stored until trial.

In another sign that the two-month investigation is broadening,
police officials also said they are seeking help from State Police
and confirmed for the first time that they believe that drugs have been stolen.

The decision to transfer the personnel -- made by top department
officials, including new Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis -- was
criticized by a police union official, who said it makes the staff
appear guilty of theft.

A police official with knowledge of the probe said Internal Affairs
investigators have discovered that drugs that were checked in recent
weeks are now missing. The official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said much of the
stolen drugs is OxyContin, a prescription painkiller.

A second police official briefed on the probe said that investigators
noticed that many of the missing drugs were involved in cases that
had been dismissed or continued without a finding, suggesting that
the culprit or culprits may have targeted evidence bags they believed
would be overlooked because they were no longer relevant to an active
case and were destined to be destroyed.

With that in mind, investigators recently decided to recheck bags
they had already looked at since the audit began. When they found
newly missing drugs, that allowed them to significantly narrow the
pool of potential suspects to employees who have had access to the
depository since August, the official said.

Drugs from about 190,000 cases, some dating back 20 years, are in the
warehouse. Police have not been able to say when they performed the
last audit before August. The investigation began in October after a
routine audit, launched in August because drugs were being moved to a
more secure space inside the depository, indicated that some drugs
were missing.

A police statement issued yesterday said that "findings suggest that
evidence tampering is not solely historical, but also current."
Police officials declined to comment on the quantity or type of drugs
that were missing initially or that have disappeared since August.

Elaine Driscoll, a department spokeswoman, said that no criminal
prosecutions will be compromised by the missing drugs, but she
declined to elaborate. The department, she said, is working closely
with Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's office to better
protect drug evidence in future.

Driscoll said that 10 employees have been moved and that two other
officers who are assigned to the warehouse but are on injury leave
will be transferred when they return to work.

"Due diligence requires that we transfer all employees with access to
drug evidence," Superintendent in Chief Albert E. Goslin said in the
statement. "This step is necessary to both protect the investigative
process and ensure the integrity of the current drug evidence. This
in no way should be seen as compromising our original intent behind
this investigation: to identify the person or persons responsible
without compromising the professionalism and honor of others
associated with the unit."

Davis met with leaders of the three main police unions at
headquarters yesterday to tell them about the turn in the
investigation and the personnel transfers.

After the meeting, Lieutenant Joseph Gillespie, president of the
Boston Police Superior Officers Federation, said he appreciated the
commissioner's outreach, but said it is wrong for Davis to transfer
the two supervising officers, particularly Captain Frank Armstrong,
who took charge of the warehouse in April and who Gillespie said
initially requested the probe after he discovered that the depository
was in disarray.

"He led the charge, and he sought an outside expert to train not only
himself, but also his entire staff on how to manage evidence,"
Gillespie said. "They say they have some type of suspicious activity
going on there. The problem is painting everybody in that unit with
the same brush."

In the department statement, Davis took care to recognize Armstrong's
work to "uncover the problem," signaling that he anticipated union
opposition to the transfer of Armstrong.

Armstrong has been sent to Hyde Park, where he will work as district
captain. Captain Michael Broderick, who had been running the Hyde
Park station, has been moved to evidence management and will soon be
in charge of the drug evidence warehouse.

Gillespie said he is also surprised that the department would
transfer Armstrong, a union representative for the Superior Officers
Federation, but not Lieutenant Detective John Fedorchuk, who is
conducting the audit, even though he supervised the drug depository
in the early 1990s.

"There's an inherent conflict," Gillespie said. "I find it
problematic that the former commander has the ability to conduct an
audit on his former command, yet the current commander who demanded
the audit has to be removed to protect the integrity of the investigation."

Goslin has said that he trusts Fedorchuk as a "very ethical and
quality person."

Davis, who was sworn in Monday, has pledged to make officers'
integrity one of his biggest priorities, saying he wants honesty
"uppermost in the officers' minds."

The department is trying to recover from a series of high-profile
corruption scandals, including the July arrest of three officers who
are accused of guarding a shipment of what they believed to be 100
kilograms of cocaine.

In July, the Globe reported that 75 officers have failed department
drug tests since 1999, including 61 who tested positive for cocaine.
In September, a 12-year department veteran resigned after he was
charged with extorting sex from a teenage prostitute.