EVIDENCE ROOM FIASCO NOTHING SHORT OF APPALLING

The wheels of justice grind slowly but exceedingly fine. Last week in
Asheville, those wheels ground to halt.

We trust justice to be served with all officials of the court and law
enforcement doing their jobs, and with no one cutting corners. It's
not just the job of the police to catch the bad guys. When
prosecutors or defense attorneys can't trust police to protect the
evidence that could convict or clear defendants at trial, then our
whole system of justice is compromised.

That's why we share District Attorney Ron Moore's outrage over both
the apparent incompetence in maintaining the evidence room of the
Asheville Police Department and the inexplicable delay before the
department came clean about the problems of missing guns, drugs and
other items.

The fallout is real, costing taxpayers and affecting the lives of
local citizens waiting for justice. The DA's office has halted jury
trials for now and now must comb through 2,200 cases that could be
potentially compromised. Charges have been dropped against an alleged
drug dealer after 397 pills of the prescription painkiller oxycodone
disappeared from sealed evidence bags.

At least four suspects in violent crimes, including a man charged in
a 2001 rape case, have been released on reduced bonds because of the
mismanaged evidence. Dozens more arrested in serious cases could be freed.

The problems first came to light after the longtime evidence room
manager was disciplined for undisclosed reasons in January. After
William Lee Smith resigned in February, a sample audit started
turning up missing items. Police Chief Bill Hogan received
preliminary results on March 6, when former APD Maj. Ross Robinson,
now an instructor with the N.C. Justice Academy, reported that he
could not find 161 items, including guns and drugs, out of 807 items
selected for a sample audit, or almost 20 percent. Some of those guns
and drugs may have been misplaced, but some may have been stolen.

Moore is understandably upset that he wasn't immediately informed of
the devastating report. Instead, the Police Department waited almost
five weeks before passing on Robinson's letter. "It's
incomprehensible to me how anybody would think they are not obligated
to tell the Office of the District Attorney that at first blush they
had a 20 percent problem," Moore said.

The evidence room has finally been sealed, and a review of all 13,889
items deemed as high-risk is now under way. Moore has enlisted the
State Bureau of Investigation to probe for wrongdoing.

What makes this episode so frustrating is that we just went through a
similar fiasco only a few years back with the evidence room of the
Buncombe County Sheriff's Office. Have we learned nothing from
mistakes made by former Sheriff Bobby Medford, now serving a federal
prison sentence on corruption charges?

The problem is not just simple incompetence in management of the
evidence room, but criminal behavior on the part of an officer whose
"moral compass failed," Hogan conceded.

Unfortunately, other moral compasses have been pointing the wrong way
in the Police Department. Taxpayers are on the hook for $48,000 as
the city agreed last week to settle with a former police officer who
brought a federal lawsuit claiming a supervising officer harassed her
with sexist and racist text messages. The woman said in her suit that
she reported being harassed by the former Officer of the Year, but
the city failed to adequately address the problem.

The evidence room fiasco will be even more costly. City Council has
approved spending up to $175,000 for an independent audit. Hogan said
the cost would likely be covered from drug seizure money, but that's
still money that could be better spent fighting crime rather than
cleaning up the Police Department's mess.

The first priority is to account for every piece of evidence so
criminal trials can resume as soon as possible.

To restore trust with prosecutors and the public, Hogan and his
department must also demonstrate what kind of new auditing procedures
are in place to make sure this doesn't happen again. We need to see
criminal charges coming out of the SBI probe so that whoever pilfered
the painkillers or anything else is punished accordingly.

To be effective, justice must be swift and fair. All evidence has to
be properly safeguarded to make sure the guilty are properly punished
while the innocent are not railroaded into unjust sentences. The
truth is that none of us can feel secure with our justice system at a
standstill.