PILING DRUG EVIDENCE LEADS TO SPACE PROBLEMS

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation has sent notice to law
enforcement agencies: Come and get your drugs.

Well, the message isn't quite that terse, but no longer will the state
agency store drug evidence for more than two years without a good reason.

This policy comes after the OSBI last year found drug evidence dating
back to the 1970s, when Gerald Ford was president and the Arab embargo
prompted a gas shortage.

One case involves some "mushroom-like" substance confiscated from an
Oklahoma State University student in 1979. That evidence remains
sealed in a brown envelope inside a cardboard box with other
envelopes, such as one containing marijuana seized in 1975 by Oklahoma
City police at Reno and Pennsylvania avenues.

"It was getting a little crowded," said Darrel Wilkins, the bureau's
criminalistics division director.

That may be an understatement. Piles of evidence representing almost
50,000 cases from some 700 law enforcement agencies were stacked to
the ceiling of the 3,500-square-foot, concrete warehouse when the
agency sent out notices last August.

The Oklahoma City location stores most of the evidence, while some is
kept at bureau labs in Enid, McAlester, Tahlequah, Lawton and Durant.

In addition to space problems, the bureau wants to deplete its
inventory because it is trying to become one of only about 200
nationally accredited labs. Accreditation helps prosecutors in court
cases.

Stringent guidelines must be followed to be nationally recognized.
Among them are more training, better instruments and evidence
handling. Specifically, all evidence containers must be properly sealed.

"It would just take too much manpower to continually check every
envelope and box," bureau spokeswoman Kym Koch said.

The new policy is working. Three-fourths of the state's law
enforcement agencies have authorized the bureau to destroy more than
90 percent of their old evidence.

Ten tons of old drugs were destroyed April 21, Wilkins
said.

Before, itemized evidence lists were mailed annually to departments,
asking them if the evidence could be destroyed. The response rate was
about 50 percent.

Law enforcement agencies making busts must submit seized drugs to the
OSBI for testing in order to prove their case in court. They can then
get the evidence returned, but many don't have the space.

There's also the matter of security, said Lt. Donnie Anderson of the
Garvin County Sheriff's Department. Anderson and other deputies make
several drug stops because of trafficking along Interstate 35.

"When we give the drugs to them (OSBI), there's a paper trail and they
destroy it when we're done with the case," Anderson said. "I think
there could be real problems if local law enforcement stored and
destroyed their own drugs."

That's when they call the bureau, which logged more than 18,000
evidence cases last year, 65 percent of them drug cases.

In 1999, police departments submitted 53 percent of the cases, while
sheriff's offices turned in 18 percent.

Until a state law was changed two years ago, the bureau was required
to store entire quantities of seized drugs. Wilkins remembers the
17,000 pounds of marijuana brought to the warehouse by state troopers
after they busted two Chicago men near McAlester.

Now the law allows the bureau to use a representative sample of drugs
for court cases.

As a result, the warehouse isn't nearly as full, although boxes
containing baled marijuana and cocaine, as well as white plastic
buckets of methamphetamine lab chemicals, still line the shelves.

For the unwary, the place looks like a post office sorting room. For
drug dealers, it would be paradise.

Security is at a premium -- so secret, the bureau won't give out its
location.