Ex-Crime Lab Chief Enters Innocent Plea

A former Sheriff’s Department supervisor pleaded not guilty Wednesday to stealing a firearm from the property room and selling it at an Oxnard pawnshop.

Ventura County Municipal Judge Arturo F. Gutierrez scheduled a June 27 preliminary hearing for Norman A. Wade, who faces a single count of grand theft.

Wade headed the Sheriff’s Department’s crime lab but was fired after pleading no contest to stealing a license-plate registration sticker from the property room and falsifying registration documents from his car, sheriff’s officials said.

On that count, Wade, 49, was found guilty, fined $300 and sentenced to two years probation.

He now works in Phoenix as a toxicologist for the Maricopa County medical examiner. He appeared in court Wednesday with his attorney, Robert Schwartz, who disputes the claim that Wade was fired from his Ventura County job.

“He was not fired,” Schwartz said. “He resigned.”

Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Kenneth Kipp acknowledged that “we may have negotiated a resignation” for Wade. But the bottom line, Kipp said, is that Wade did not leave the department voluntarily.

In his current criminal case, 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 that they no longer needed it, officials said.