EX-TRASH HAULER - COPS THREW OUT CASH

Former Garbage Truck Driver Says He Found Drugs, Knives

A former garbage truck driver who picked up trash at the Denver police
headquarters says he routinely found money, drugs and weapons
discarded in dumpsters used by the department's property room.

>From 1994 to 1998, Eric Russell collected trash daily from 10
dumpsters in the locked basement of the police building at West 13th
Avenue and Cherokee Street.

The 33-year-old, who worked for Waste Management of Colorado, said he
kept the cash, sold thousands of dollars worth of items at flea
markets, and discarded the drugs.

Russell said recent revelations that as much as $100,000 may have been
stolen from the property room persuaded him to come forward.

"There were all kinds of things there," he said earlier this week. "I
used the cash for lunch money. I found knives, evidence bags ...
really awful crime scene photographs, and objects tagged as evidence
in cases. I once found a handgun, but that was broken."

Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman has asked officers to check out
Russell's claims as part of a pending investigation into property room
procedures.

Earlier this week, Whitman launched a criminal probe into the
disappearance of thousands of dollars from the evidence room over the
past eight years. Whitman said he believes the money was stolen.

Police officials acknowledged Thursday that evidence from closed
criminal cases, as well as lost or abandoned property, was often
discarded in dumpsters until a policy change just over two years ago.

But they said nothing would have been discarded from pending or
unsolved cases.

Waste Management confirmed Russell worked for the company.

Russell said he lost his job with Waste Management due to absenteeism
after a string of illnesses and injuries kept him from working in the
late spring of 1998. Russell said that just prior to that, he noticed
the amount of discarded material in the dumpsters "began to drop off."

But during the three years he worked the route, Russell said he found
things in the department's dumpsters that shocked him.

"I once found a large, dark trash bag that was like more than an inch
deep in cocaine, or maybe methamphetamine, all across the bottom," he
said. " It had broken glass mixed into it, and there was drug
paraphernalia in the bag."

A bloody hammer, tagged as evidence, along with crime photos of a
victim who had apparently been killed with it, were among items
Russell said he found.

Russell said he found more than 100 knives, one of which was a "cane
knife" more than 2 feet long. It also was tagged as case evidence, he
said.

Russell had the cane knife Thursday, although officers said they were
going to ask him to return it along with a few other items he had not
sold or discarded.

Denver police Division Chief Steve Allison said evidence from closed
criminal cases were routinely discarded in dumpsters beneath the
building prior to late 1997.

He said it "came to our attention that dumpster divers were going
after valuables there. Some janitorial staff discovered items being
discarded from the property room, and they were going through the
dumpsters looking for them."

Allison said procedures have been revised, and all guns and knives are
now sent through a crusher and carefully monitored to see that they
are destroyed. But he acknowledged that policies were more lax before
the end of 1997.

Waste Management now collects items that are discarded by the police
department as bio-hazard material -- including abandoned baby seats,
coats and jackets left behind at DIA and Coors Field -- and transports
them to an incinerator in Utah.

But Allison and Lt. D.K. Dilley, his aide, insist that narcotics were
burned even during the time Russell claims he found drugs. Dilley said
the items Russell claimed he found could have been fake drugs, such as
powdered sugar.

"There was a variety of such stuff, different textures, things like
that," Russell said. "But I'm pretty sure this stuff was drugs,
cocaine and marijuana. It wasn't oregano."

Russell said he never contacted police about his finds and assumed the
material wasn't important because it had been discarded.

Russell said the money he found was generally in small denominations --
$15 to $20 at a time -- and was usually in paper wrappers inside brown
paper bags with names on then.

Whitman said it was possible that money Russell said he found was
personal property of of people who were confined in the county
lock-up, and had been inadvertently thrown away.

Dilley said that procedures in the evidence room call for cash to be
sealed in self-sticking plastic holders. She said that it would be
very unlikely that cash from the evidence room would have been
misplaced in that way.

Capt. Miriam Reed, who oversaw the property room from September 1998
until her transfer a few weeks ago, said that property was disposed of
under the new policy during the time she was in charge.

"Drugs, guns and money are the three most sensitive items we handled,"
Reed said. "A lot of things have changed in the last couple of years."

Reed also said she repeatedly sent memos to police administrators
under former Police Chief Tom Sanchez "over many months" asking them
to upgrade computer systems to make sure evidence was accounted for.

"But the administration chose to buy more shelves instead," said Reed,
who added she alerted administrators' about cash discrepancies "weeks
before the media got wind of this."

Whitman, who was appointed interim police chief after Sanchez was
asked to resign, ordered the massive audit of the property room based
on Reed's discoveries.

That audit led to the pending criminal investigation.