MISHANDLING OF EVIDENCE LEADS TO END OF VALIANT

VALIANT, the Valley Interagency Narcotics Team, will formally disband after
an 18-month-long investigation showed that it had mishandled evidence in
more than 1,300 cases.

A team of auditors found that 345 firearms, $10,423 in cash, and drugs in
quantities varying from less than one gram to five pounds were unaccounted
for, and many records had been destroyed.

The Oregon Department of Justice reviewed the cases and on March 11
submitted them to a Linn County grand jury, which did not indict anyone.
Steven Briggs, of the Justice Department's Organized Crime Section, wrote
in his review that there was not enough evidence to determine whether any
VALIANT officer had committed a crime.

Albany Police Chief Joe Simon, the current chairman of VALIANT's governing
board, said the investigation showed nothing criminal occurred.

"I feel confident that most of them could be explained, even if we were not
able to confirm everything," he said.

The investigation

The investigation into VALIANT has been going on for more than 18 months,
since James Welch of the Linn County Sheriff's Office assumed the post of
VALIANT supervisor in the fall of 2003. He tried to find a gun that was
supposed to be released to its owner, but couldn't find it. While
searching, he discovered other irregularities in the way evidence was handled.

The VALIANT board hired retired McMinnville police chief Rod Brown to
conduct an initial audit, which confirmed Welch's findings. The board then
hired Gary David, former Sweet Home police chief, to do a more detailed
investigation. By June 2004, his team had found 1,166 cases with problems.

A second team, made up of detectives from the member agencies of VALIANT,
then took over, with Cpt. Jeff Hinrichs of the Albany Police in charge.
They spent 10 months going over all the cases, which amounted to 1,349 in all.

The findings

The investigation showed that VALIANT officers routinely destroyed evidence
without following proper procedures, and in fact weren't even aware of
evidence laws.

Briggs of the Justice Department wrote in his report, "It is now clear that
VALIANT personnel, as well as deputy district attorneys for Linn and Benton
counties, did not know the correct procedures for disposing of evidence at
the conclusion of a case."

However, in almost all cases, the destruction or mishandling of evidence
didn't happen until after the case had been concluded. This means no
convictions will be overturned as a result of the findings, Briggs wrote.

In some cases involving more than one defendant, evidence was disposed
after only one person had been tried, meaning that charges were dropped for
lack of evidence against co-defendants who may otherwise have been convicted.

According to Briggs' report, "the vast majority" of VALIANT's problems had
to do with destroying evidence but not documenting that destruction.

Scott Bressler, a Benton County sheriff's deputy who was supervisor of the
team from May 2000 to January 2003, told investigators that his standard
procedure was to wait six months after seizing drugs and then destroy them
if no charges had been filed. However, in hundreds of cases there was no
record detailing how it had been destroyed, when, and by whom.

In some cases, documentation may have once existed, but records were
destroyed in January 2003, when VALIANT personnel, following instructions
from the board to clean out their office, burned all closed case files more
than five years old.

Simon said most police agencies keep old files for about seven years.
However, while the file may be destroyed, some data about the case is
always saved in an electronic format, he said. That didn't happen with VALIANT.

"Because VALIANT was not part of any of our records retention systems, they
were an entity unto themselves, that information was not captured," he
said. "When they burned the physical files, those were the only files there
were about those cases."

In many cases, officers disposed of personal property once the case was
over without following state law that requires notifying the rightful owner
and giving him or her 30 days to claim it. Officers said they got approval
from deputy district attorneys before disposing of property, but they
didn't get formal court orders and often no written documentation at all.
Approval often came over the phone or e-mail. In one instance, Bressler
e-mailed a DA paralegal and asked if he could "dump" the evidence. The
paralegal replied "dump."

In some cases, it was impossible for investigators to trace what had become
of the large amounts of cash often seized during drug investigations. Money
was usually turned over to the Benton County Finance Department for
handling. But the finance department had purged all its records that were
more than three years old.

The records that exist contain occasional discrepancies. Money seized from
one investigation was sometimes combined for deposit with sums from another
investigation, making it difficult to determine exactly what happened to
money from specific cases.

In the end, $10,423 could not be accounted for.

Why?

Joe Simon said there's no simple, concrete answer to explain why VALIANT
officers weren't following the law. Some factors that led to the breakdown
of the agency included a lack of manpower, lack of supervision, lack of
accountability, and bad habits that became institutionalized over time.

When VALIANT was formed 13 years ago, there were eight police agencies
involved, and one person was assigned solely to supervise the day-to-day
operations of the team. As time went on, two agencies pulled out because of
budget shortfalls. The supervisor became merely a senior detective who was
working his own caseload as well as supervising.

"They were all just part-time," Simon said of the supervisors. "That dual
role was very difficult."

The member agencies also struggled to keep any one person in the supervisor
post for any significant length of time, often recalling the supervisor to
fill gaps in staffing their own agencies. There were nine different
supervisors over 11 years.

Also, because VALIANT operated separately from the member agencies, it
didn't have the level of clerical and administrative staffing that most
police agencies rely on to handle record-keeping and evidence.

Simon said VALIANT didn't have any clear policies or procedures to guide
officers. When a new officer came on board, an old one trained him.

"Certain practices got institutionalized," he said. "Problems tend to grow."

Simon said the problems "accelerated" as time went on, and Briggs noted in
his report that "during the last four years of operation, supervision and
oversight were poor."

Accountability

Though the grand jury did not indict anyone, member agencies will now
determine whether officers will face any internal disciplinary consequences.

Investigators used three criteria to determine whether to refer a case to
internal affairs: whether any one person could be held responsible, whether
there was a violation of policy or a deviation from acceptable police
practices, and whether the responsible person was still employed with a law
enforcement agency.

Of the 1,349 cases, 219 were recommended for internal affairs.

Simon said he couldn't speculate on possible penalties. He said it would
vary from agency to agency and would depend on whether the officer had any
other previous strikes against him in his personnel file.

Since the investigation, the VALIANT board has tried to track down people
whose money or property was improperly disposed. They've paid 14 people a
total of $9,180 to compensate for lost property, and 28 people a total of
$14,652 for money that had been seized.

The future

Though VALIANT is no more, Simon said area police chiefs and sheriffs are
working to come up with a new way to fight drugs. Whatever they come up
with will have higher accountability and stronger supervision, he said. It
also may not focus just on narcotics cases.

"We want to take a more holistic approach," he said. "Narcotics are part
and parcel of many other crimes. About eighty percent of our cases are
related to narcotics. We want to attack the whole problem, including
peripheral crimes."

He said there will likely be some formal inter-agency agreement, but it
won't be an independent team like VALIANT.

"We want to assure the publics that narcotics investigation is not going
away," he said. "It's just going to take a different format, and we think a
stronger format."

AT A GLANCE

The problems:

Evidence was destroyed without any record of what happened to it.

Files were burned without keeping any electronic copies.

Seized property was disposed of without attempting to return it to its owner.

The penalty: No one was indicted. Officers will face internal affairs
investigations in their member agencies.

The future: VALIANT will be disbanded. Local police agencies will come up
with some other way of jointly fighting narcotics crimes.