Audit Assails LAPD’s Accounting for Seized Valuables

The Los Angeles Police Department is “sloppy” when it comes to storing and accounting for guns, drugs, jewelry, electronic equipment and other property seized by police, the city’s controller said Wednesday.

A 35-page audit released by Controller Rick Tuttle found that the LAPD’s supervision of property has internal weaknesses that jeopardize the success of criminal prosecutions and create easy opportunities for abuse and theft.

Each year, the LAPD’s property division processes about 250,000 pieces of property, ranging from weapons, cash and guns to blood- and semen-stained clothing. Officials said the LAPD’s 18 police stations received, on an annual basis, about 13,000 guns, $2 billion worth of drugs and as much as $5 million in currency.

Auditors discovered that some of those items were either misplaced or missing with no explanations. Other property, such as drugs, were not always kept in the most secure locations.

In one case, some “high-value drugs” and cash were stored next to employees’ snack foods in a vault.

“They don’t have good inventory control,” Tuttle said. “They have a lot of improvement to do here.”

While acknowledging that improvements can be made, LAPD officials bristled at the accusation that the department is careless in handling and securing property.

“It’s absolutely untrue,” said William R. Moran, head of the LAPD’s fiscal and support bureau. “The volume of evidence we process is staggering. . . . This is a system that deserves commendation instead of being attacked.”

The LAPD’s processing and safeguarding of evidence was one of the dominant issues raised by defense attorneys during the murder trial of O.J. Simpson. The attorneys accused the department of shoddy procedures.

According to the auditors’ report, one troubling lapse in oversight occurs when the property no longer needs to be stored by the LAPD and is auctioned or junked. Auditors said the department does not properly track exactly which items are sent to, or sold at, auctions. In a small sampling of 27 items listed for disposal, auditors found two items--a radar detector and a car stereo--missing. The department also does not adequately track property that eventually is acquired for department purposes, such as video cameras.

Another problem, the auditors said, is at the department’s armory. According to the controller’s report, the LAPD does not keep backup records for tracking firearms in its possession. Moreover, no records are kept on the inventory of parts for firearms.

Such procedural shortcomings may lead “to waste, misuse or theft of property,” the report states.

In addition to developing better procedures for monitoring evidence and property, the auditors recommended that the LAPD install security cameras in areas where the items are stored, rotate officers who work in the property rooms and implement a “bar coding” system similar to what supermarkets use to scan prices on groceries.

The LAPD, Moran said, already is working on implementing the bar-coding procedures that he expects to be in use by summer. He said he will review the recommendations in the report and “figure out what we can do with the facilities and resources that we have.”

Some of the problems in tracking property, Moran said, are the result of automating the manual records six years ago. “It’s a data conversion problem, basically,” he said, adding that he expects those problems to be resolved as the older property is discarded.

Moran said that the department has made remarkable improvement in its handling of property compared to a decade ago when nothing was computerized and property tags were known to come off items, making them difficult to identify. He added that he knew of no criminal cases that had to be dismissed because of missing evidence.

“We’re light-years ahead of where we were,” Moran said. “A lot of other agencies would love to have an automated system like we do.”

Tuttle and his auditors acknowledge that the LAPD has made significant improvements since their last audit in 1992.

Auditors said the sheer volume of evidence also has caused some storage concerns. At the Scientific Investigation Division, for example, employees maintained a cache of firearms that “is too large for its current storage space.”

Timothy B. Lynch, administrative deputy at the controller’s office, said auditors did not try to undercover any criminal activity at the property room, but rather identify weaknesses in the department’s policies and procedures in processing the property.

He said auditors found loopholes in the department’s handling of property that make the temptation of criminal activity too great.

“The whole system needs to be tightened up,” Lynch said.