CITY SUCCESSFULLY SAFEGUARDING DRUG EVIDENCE, FLAHERTY SAYS

City police procedures for protecting seized drug evidence and cash are
working successfully, according to a study released this month by the city
controller's office.

Late last year Controller Tom Flaherty's office studied three months of
arrests in which evidence was seized and accounted for all that evidence.

It recommended some procedural changes, but said the Pittsburgh Police
Bureau's current procedures were "effectively safeguarding the evidence"
taken from suspects. The office also lauded ethics training given to police
officers and secret monitoring of evidence keeping by the bureau's
"Integrity Squad" as well.

City Councilman Sala Udin requested the performance audit in December after
Wilkinsburg's police chief, Gerald Brewer, was charged with stealing cash
from the borough's police evidence room.

Auditors studied 210 arrests made between October and December in which
cash or drugs were seized. They followed the paper trail from an arrest to
verification of seized evidence by a desk officer, to transport of seized
drugs to the Allegheny County crime lab and seized cash to the city's
Property Room.

In all but 22 of the arrests, the evidence was noted and recorded every
step of the way until reaching the Property Room, where it is kept until
needed for trials.

In those 22 arrests, auditors could not find the seized evidence recorded
in books at the police stations or the Narcotics Division, yet it was
recorded at the arrest and at the Property Room.

Police told the auditors that some of the logging steps are skipped when
officers are ordered by their superiors to take the evidence directly to
the Property Room. That occurs when the evidence is highly valuable or large.

The auditors suggested the Police Bureau could improve its evidence
procedures by studying why evidence wasn't recorded in the station logs in
the 22 cases cited, keeping those logbooks more tidy, increasing the size
of the Property Room, updating evidence-tracking computer software and
shortening the chain of custody from the seizure of evidence to its
placement in the Property Room.

In a response, Police Chief Robert W. McNeilly Jr. said the bureau planned
to increase the size of the Property Room when it moved police headquarters
and detectives into one building, perhaps next year. He said the bureau had
already shortened the chain of custody, and that he would forward the
computer recommendation to the city Information Services Department.

"Considering the vast amount of property and evidence handled, packaged and
stored regularly, it is a credit to the Bureau of Police and the officers,
detectives and supervisors of the bureau that it is completed virtually
problem free," McNeilly wrote.

The procedure for safeguarding evidence usually goes like this:

After an arrest, an officer takes the evidence to his office, where it is
bagged and identified with a number and a description. It is then placed in
a lock box, for which only the station commander has a key.

Later, a transporting officer takes the evidence to the crime lab or the
Property Room. Four officers staff the Property Room, which holds guns,
money, drugs and other evidence. It is secured by mechanical locks and an
electronic system; only the officers who work there have keys and the
deactivation code.

Cash is delivered in a sealed envelope, with the dollar amount written on
the outside. The Property Room officer, watched by the transporting
officer, opens the envelope and places the money in an automatic counting
machine. If there is a difference in the amount between the machine's count
and the number written on the envelope, the receiving officer will send the
evidence back to the police station for an explanation.

Property Room officers collect analyzed drugs from the crime lab every two
weeks. The drugs are sealed and identified with a crime lab number and
double-checked against crime lab receipt records before they are taken.
They are then assigned a Property Room location.