Pexels / Terrance Barksdale
Town of San Antonio conducts an audit of police proof dealing with procedures roughly each 5 to seven years.
Editor’s Notice: This story was produced by the scholars on the Howard Middle for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State College’s Walter Cronkite Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication, an initiative of the Scripps Howard Fund in honor of the late information business government and pioneer Roy W. Howard. Contact the reporting group at [email protected] or on X @HowardCenterASU.
Eight-month-old Rosalinda Martinez died in April of final 12 months after a July 2023 indictment says she was shot throughout a combat between her dad and mom over a handgun. San Antonio police collected proof from the crime scene.
Police arrested Ruby Mora and Alejandro Martinez, the child’s dad and mom, for aggravated assault with a lethal weapon and reckless bodily harm to their baby, in response to court docket data. Mora was arrested on April 18, 2023, and Alejandro was booked a month afterward Might 7. Each Mora and Martinez are in jail and awaiting trial in Bexar County Courtroom.
However San Antonio police have misplaced a vital piece of proof: a bullet.
The SAPD disclosed the lack of the bullet in child Martinez’s case in response to a data request from the Howard Middle for Investigative Journalism at Arizona State College. Data present SAPD had assigned a barcode to the bullet, which was booked into proof as “ONE (1) APPARENT LIVE ‘FC 9MM LUGER’ ROUND.”
Martinez’s protection legal professional, James Tocci, declined to touch upon whether or not the lacking proof will affect his case. Lt. Michelle Ramos, SAPD Deputy Chief of Workers, stated by way of e mail that the SAPD is “assured that inquiries to the lacking ‘reside bullet’ shall be answered in court docket.”
Marcia G. Shein, a veteran legal protection lawyer primarily based in Georgia, stated legal defendants usually profit when police companies lose proof after it’s collected.
“Understanding how proof is collected and whether it is performed correctly and saved correctly is essential,” stated Shein, former president of the Georgia Affiliation of Prison Protection Legal professionals, by way of e mail.
Shein stated improper dealing with of proof wouldn’t usually lead a defendant to be “fully exonerated.” However, she stated in an e mail, “It has nonetheless been a consider getting a extra favorable plea or final result.” She additionally stated protection legal professionals often file data requests to study whether or not police broken proof has an affect on trials.
Previous audits reveal repeated issues with SAPD evidence-handling
Town of San Antonio conducts an audit of police proof dealing with procedures roughly each 5 to seven years.
In its most up-to-date audit, dated Might of 2024, town confirmed bullets and casings can be saved within the Property Room, however stated the audit “particularly excluded actions carried out by the Murder Unit… and the Firearms/Ballistic Unit.” Outdoors of these models, the report stated, “proof preservation controls are sufficient and dealing as supposed.”
Three prior metropolis audits of SAPD’s proof dealing with procedures, carried out between 2006 and 2019, confirmed the division had a sample of permitting too many unauthorized customers entry to its proof storage areas. Every of these three audits discovered the SAPD wanted to tighten safety. None of these audits stated they excluded the murder or ballistics models.
In 2006, town’s audit decided that “an extreme variety of customers have laptop entry to property and proof data,” together with 57 workers town had fired who nonetheless had entry.
Auditors discovered greater than 500 individuals with badges that will give them entry to proof who couldn’t be recognized as present workers and concluded, “many of those… customers had not too long ago accessed the mainframe.” Auditors famous, “permitting entry to delicate info to those that don’t have a official want will increase the danger of knowledge loss, corruption, manipulation, disclosure, and misuse.
In a subsequent audit in 2013, town decided that “entry to the property and proof warehouse was not being reviewed.” Auditors offered an inventory of suggestions, together with tighter safety insurance policies similar to extra frequent testing of the proof warehouse’s safety and alarm system and modifications to the important thing entry codes to delicate areas.
In its 2019 audit, town discovered that workers from varied models might entry the confidential proof saved within the property rooms freely, even when it was not for his or her unit. For instance, 26 of the 28 employees members who had entry to the primary facility warehouse had been from Arson Investigation, whereas the remaining two had transferred to completely different models and now not required entry. In accordance with the audit, “Whereas no inappropriate entry was famous, inadequate entry controls will increase the chance of misappropriation of property.”
What “may” have occurred to the lacking bullet?
Throughout a cellphone interview with San Antonio Police Division’s Public Data Officer Nicholas Soliz in March, Soliz didn’t reply when requested what the division is aware of for sure concerning the lack of proof within the Martinez case.
However Soliz offered theories about how the bullet may need disappeared from the proof room – every thing from a suspect tampering with the proof, to the chance that it was misplaced in transit between two property rooms.
In explaining the tampering principle, Soliz famous that responding officers initially went to Northeast Baptist Hospital in San Antonio slightly than the residence the place the child was fatally shot. Soliz stated that one of many suspects, Alejandro Martinez, the child’s father, left the hospital on the time and was not in police custody. Soliz prompt Martinez may need been concerned within the bullet’s disappearance.
“The suspect left, Alejandro left. Who’s to say, like, within the time that the victims had been within the hospital and Alejandro was gone, that that crime scene was, y’know, messed,” Soliz stated. “It might’ve been. Officers didn’t reply there till later to safe that crime scene, from what I keep in mind so, there’s a whole lot of components that go into issues like that.”
Martinez’s lawyer, James V. Tocci, didn’t reply to requests to touch upon Soliz’s statements.
When the Howard Middle requested police to elucidate how a bullet might get a barcode that recognized it as SAPD proof after which later be taken by a homicide suspect from the crime scene, Soliz responded in an e mail that he had solely beforehand shared “hypotheticals” about lacking proof, none of which utilized to “any particular case.”
In the identical interview in March, Soliz supplied one other principle for a way the bullet linked to the child’s capturing may need disappeared: The bullet, Soliz stated, could have been misplaced within the transition between the SAPD’s two property and proof rooms.
“So there’s an preliminary property room, like, officers go to an preliminary property room subsequent to jail, and from there, that property is taken to our precise property room on the opposite aspect of city, in San Antonio. So there’s a whole lot of motion.”
In Might 2010, the SAPD relocated to a brand new proof and property warehouse, paying over $8 million to double its area. Since then, the previous Property and Proof Room has served as a drop-off facility for officers who can’t take proof to the brand new, offsite location on the opposite aspect of city throughout regular work hours. In accordance with the 2013 audit, metropolis workers transport proof from the previous facility each day by metropolis van.
Within the March interview, Soliz stated SAPD most probably has “video of that officer logging in that proof that evening and from it getting shipped from the small property room to the massive property room.” Soliz stated no matter occurred with that bullet, it could be on digicam.
However after the bullet tied to the child’s homicide left the SAPD’s small property room, Soliz stated that he wouldn’t understand how the bullet would have gone lacking.
“Now, after it leaves that preliminary property room, I actually can’t communicate to that as a result of that has nothing to do with us – that different property room, that’s run by residents – civilians,” Soliz stated.
SAPD declined a data request asking the division to supply the Howard Middle any paperwork associated to the submitting and logging of bodily proof on this case, together with any video of proof being logged or filed into both of the property rooms or to supply the names of these concerned within the submitting and transporting of such proof. The SAPD denied the request on the grounds that the data associated to a case of alleged or suspected baby abuse or neglect.
The SAPD offered no info to help Soliz’s preliminary assertion that prompt Martinez may need tampered with the proof, nor has it defined the bullet’s disappearance.
Proof dealing with issues elsewhere
San Antonio isn’t the one police division fighting the way it handles crime scene proof.
The Schertz Police Division, in a suburb of San Antonio, revealed in a press launch in July 2022 that it had eliminated or destroyed proof from its property and proof room with out following correct procedures. Particularly, the division stated 1,376 instances from 2007 to 2018 had been impacted, and it had not recognized on the time of the press launch whether or not or not these legal instances had been open or pending.
“The objective of the Schertz Police Division is to supply exemplary regulation enforcement service and sadly, on this occasion we failed to satisfy that customary,” Police Chief Jim Lowery stated within the press launch. “I hope that our residents know we’re dedicated to studying from this case and can work to make sure one thing like this by no means occurs once more.”
Dallas additionally had points with insufficient surveillance of its property storage areas. A 2021 audit of Dallas’ property and proof rooms discovered that neither the Dallas Auto Pound nor the Property and Proof division was outfitted with video surveillance to observe who had entry to the stock at these areas.
Equally, the Dallas audit indicated that property and proof had been saved in a decommissioned patrol station, citing area limitations. However the objects weren’t nicely protected, the audit discovered. In a single space of the power, property and proof had been saved on “wooden pallets with muddy environment from rainwater that floods the world.” The audit prompt that “warmth, chilly, humidity, and rain might injury the objects, rendering them unrecognizable or unusable for proof functions.”
Dallas PD didn’t reply to a request for remark.
One other Texas police division had a unique problem. In a cellphone interview, Wade Roberts, a lieutenant for Huntsville Police Division, a metropolis north of Houston, advised the Howard Middle that his workplace had not misplaced proof however had skilled a unique form of drawback at an previous proof facility: Rodents had been consuming the proof, particularly seized marijuana.
“Finally, we simply discovered that our drug proof was being gnawed on,” Lt. Roberts stated. “You possibly can see that the packaging had been eaten by, and mice and rats had been entering into that packaging.”
Roberts added that after his company switched proof services, the rodents haven’t been a problem.
Lacking proof isn’t only a Texas drawback. The Howard Middle reached out to police companies in different cities of comparable measurement and located they too had misplaced monitor of things that had been logged as proof.
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Division, with an analogous variety of sworn-in officers as SAPD, revealed in response to a public data request how a lot proof was misplaced from 2020 to 2024.
Data from the LVMPD record 58 entries indicating “lacking” objects beneath their possession, together with bullets, “doable DNA” samples, drug paraphernalia, license plates, and varied articles of clothes.
The LVMPD identified that the handfuls of misplaced objects had been solely a really small fraction of the objects they hold of their property and proof rooms.
LVMPD sergeants are liable for conducting inner audits of their proof vault each 60 days. These audits are usually unannounced and are ordered by the Sheriff. LVMPD didn’t reply to extra questions.
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