Ex-Sheriff’s Official Under Probe : Crime: Norman Wade, fired two years ago, is being investigated in the disappearance of $15,000 from property room he oversaw.

A former Sheriff’s Department official is under investigation in the disappearance of up to $15,000 from the property room he oversaw, officials said Wednesday.

Norman A. Wade, who was fired two years ago after a job-related arrest, is also accused of stealing a gun and a camera from his department and selling them at an Oxnard pawn shop, said Chief Deputy Kenneth Kipp.

Wade was head of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department crime lab until 1992, when he was fired after pleading no contest to charges that he stole a license plate registration sticker from the property room and falsified registration documents for his own car. He was fined $300 and sentenced to two years’ probation in that case.

Officials Wednesday had no explanation for how the cash could have disappeared, and one source told The Times that the case reveals problems with providing adequate security in the property room.

“We process between 20,000 and 30,000 pieces of evidence through that property room annually and when we find something missing we jump on it immediately,” Kipp said.

Kipp said the case has prompted the department to try to improve procedures in the sheriff’s property room “to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”

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“It’s not like we have five or six of these things happen every year or two,” he said. “This is probably the second or third time in my career that I’m aware of.”

Wade is accused of taking a .357-magnum pistol out of the gun locker at the crime lab in Ventura and pawning it at Get-Mor Loan & Jewelry in Oxnard for $125 in May, 1991.

The handgun had been logged into the gun locker in the sheriff’s property room after prosecutors in a 1983 court case determined they no longer needed it, Kipp said. Lab technicians had access to it for ballistics tests, prosecutors could have it brought to court for witness comparisons or it might have been slated to be destroyed with other guns that deputies take off the streets each year, Kipp said.

Wade also allegedly pawned a department-issued, 35-millimeter camera at the same shop sometime in 1992 for $100, Kipp said. After he was fired and arrested, the department asked him to return the camera. Wade went to the pawn shop, bought back the camera and turned it in to his superiors, Kipp said.

The case came to light when a routine audit of the gun locker found the pistol was missing. Remembering Wade’s court case, detectives checked pawn slips that shops around Ventura County register with police agencies.

They found that Wade had pawned the gun, the camera and a variety of his own property, including jewelry, Kipp said.

Kipp could offer no motive for the alleged thefts, although he said there are indications Wade had family trouble and possibly financial trouble at the time.

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Wade, 49, who now works in Phoenix as a toxicologist for the Maricopa County Medical Examiner, turned himself in to investigators Tuesday morning, Kipp said.

He refused to answer detectives’ questions on the advice of his attorney, Kipp said. He was charged with grand theft and embezzlement and released on $10,000 bail just after noon Tuesday.

He is to be arraigned June 1 in Ventura County Municipal Court.

Wade and his attorney, Robert I. Schwartz of Ventura, could not be reached Wednesday for comment.

“This is really serious business to the sheriff,” said Kipp, recently appointed to oversee the lab and other divisions in the department.

“We’re talking about a position of trust and the integrity of the agency,” he said. “This man violated that trust and compromised the integrity of the agency.”