Hate when That Happens

[Pedro56]

Guns in police custody fell into criminal hands
Audit sealed for years also shows drugs missing

February 26, 2007
BY FRANK MAIN Crime Reporter

An audit the city kept secret for more than a decade shows the Chicago Police evidence warehouse was in such disarray in the 1990s that guns vanished from the facility and were later recovered from criminals.

A federal judge last week lifted a protective order on the audit reports, which revealed the status of 133 guns was "undetermined" because of a failure to record the movement of evidence. Officials also could not account for nearly $7 million in drugs.

The audit showed at least four confiscated handguns disappeared from the warehouse between 1991 and 1995, and were seized again in weapons and drug arrests on the South Side.

Since the 1996 audit, two police employees have been sent to prison for stealing drugs from the warehouse controlled by the police Evidence and Recovered Property Section. No one has been arrested for the guns that left the facility.

In 1996, police Inspector Robert Voight warned that the department should immediately padlock the warehouse -- then located in the basement of the court building at 26th and California -- and move evidence to another facility, according to the unsealed documents.

Rolls-Royce, furs, jewelry

The warehouse was a mess, with "thousands of boxes of narcotics lying in open boxes on the floor" and "marijuana scattered on the floor," Voight said. A lack of security compromised the value of the evidence, he said.

Then in 1998, civilian police aide Jill McClendon was sentenced to 10 years in prison for trying to steal $1.1 million of confiscated drugs from the 26th Street facility.

But it was not until 2001 -- when Officer John L. Smith was arrested for stealing 44 pounds of cocaine from the warehouse -- that the department moved to open a more secure warehouse on the West Side and started tracking items with a computerized bar-code system.

Smith was sentenced to 24 years in prison. He had bought an Olympia Fields home, a Chicago apartment building, a Rolls-Royce, fur coats, jewelry and cases of Dom Perignon by selling the stolen cocaine, prosecutors said.

fmain@suntimes.com

[Pedro56]

If you could have seen the thugs that used to work there you would understand.