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| NEWS > 07 December 2006 |
Other related articles:
Vital to back police on terror
Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Commons that two terrorist plots had been foiled since the July 7 attack in London.
Mr Blair revealed the plots as he sought to secure support for the Terrorism Bill. He said the police had told him it was "absolutely vital" that terror suspects could be detained without charge for up to 90 days.
The Prime Minister told the Commons: "We are not living in a police state but we are living in a country that faces a real and serious threat of terrorism."
Mr Blair told MPs that the terrorists want to "destroy our way of life and want to ... Read more
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Boston Globe - United States
07 December 2006
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Hub police drug probe broadens
All 10 officers working in the Boston Police Department's central drug warehouse have been transferred to other duties, because anticorruption investigators believe that evidence is being stolen, officials said yesterday.
For now, only department auditors and investigators from the Internal Affairs Division who are working on the case will be allowed into the Hyde Park depository, where drugs seized as evidence in thousands of cases are stored until trial.
In another sign that the two-month investigation is broadening, police officials also said they are seeking help from State Police and confirmed for the first time that they believe that drugs have been stolen.
The decision to transfer the personnel -- made by top department officials, including new Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis -- was criticized by a police union official, who said it makes the staff appear guilty of theft.
A police official with knowledge of the probe said Internal Affairs investigators have discovered that drugs that were checked in recent weeks are now missing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said much of the stolen drugs is OxyContin, a prescription painkiller.
A second police official briefed on the probe said that investigators noticed that many of the missing drugs were involved in cases that had been dismissed or continued without a finding, suggesting that the culprit or culprits may have targeted evidence bags they believed would be overlooked because they were no longer relevant to an active case and were destined to be destroyed.
With that in mind, investigators recently decided to recheck bags they had already looked at since the audit began. When they found newly missing drugs, that allowed them to significantly narrow the pool of potential suspects to employees who have had access to the depository since August, the official said.
Drugs from about 190,000 cases, some dating back 20 years, are in the warehouse. Police have not been able to say when they performed the last audit before August. The investigation began in October after a routine audit, launched in August because drugs were being moved to a more secure space inside the depository, indicated that some drugs were missing.
A police statement issued yesterday said that "findings suggest that evidence tampering is not solely historical, but also current." Police officials declined to comment on the quantity or type of drugs that were missing initially or that have disappeared since August.
Elaine Driscoll, a department spokeswoman, said that no criminal prosecutions will be compromised by the missing drugs, but she declined to elaborate. The department, she said, is working closely with Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's office to better protect drug evidence in future.
Driscoll said that 10 employees have been moved and that two other officers who are assigned to the warehouse but are on injury leave will be transferred when they return to work.
"Due diligence requires that we transfer all employees with access to drug evidence," Superintendent in Chief Albert E. Goslin said in the statement. "This step is necessary to both protect the investigative process and ensure the integrity of the current drug evidence. This in no way should be seen as compromising our original intent behind this investigation: to identify the person or persons responsible without compromising the professionalism and honor of others associated with the unit."
Davis met with leaders of the three main police unions at headquarters yesterday to tell them about the turn in the investigation and the personnel transfers.
After the meeting, Lieutenant Joseph Gillespie, president of the Boston Police Superior Officers Federation, said he appreciated the commissioner's outreach, but said it is wrong for Davis to transfer the two supervising officers, particularly Captain Frank Armstrong, who took charge of the warehouse in April and who Gillespie said initially requested the probe after he discovered that the depository was in disarray.
"He led the charge, and he sought an outside expert to train not only himself, but also his entire staff on how to manage evidence," Gillespie said. "They say they have some type of suspicious activity going on there. The problem is painting everybody in that unit with the same brush."
In the department statement, Davis took care to recognize Armstrong's work to "uncover the problem," signaling that he anticipated union opposition to the transfer of Armstrong.
Armstrong has been sent to Hyde Park, where he will work as district captain. Captain Michael Broderick, who had been running the Hyde Park station, has been moved to evidence management and will soon be in charge of the drug evidence warehouse.
Gillespie said he is also surprised that the department would transfer Armstrong, a union representative for the Superior Officers Federation, but not Lieutenant Detective John Fedorchuk, who is conducting the audit, even though he supervised the drug depository in the early 1990s.
"There's an inherent conflict," Gillespie said. "I find it problematic that the former commander has the ability to conduct an audit on his former command, yet the current commander who demanded the audit has to be removed to protect the integrity of the investigation."
Goslin has said that he trusts Fedorchuk as a "very ethical and quality person."
Davis, who was sworn in Monday, has pledged to make officers' integrity one of his biggest priorities, saying he wants honesty "uppermost in the officers' minds."
The department is trying to recover from a series of high-profile corruption scandals, including the July arrest of three officers who are accused of guarding a shipment of what they believed to be 100 kilograms of cocaine.
In July, the Globe reported that 75 officers have failed department drug tests since 1999, including 61 who tested positive for cocaine. In September, a 12-year department veteran resigned after he was charged with extorting sex from a teenage prostitute.
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