A veil of secrecy over missing guns, drugs and money in Asheville: Xpress’ Forbes guest blogs for Sunlight Foundation

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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Mountain Xpress senior reporter David Forbes guest blogs for the Sunlight Foundation,  an organization that works for  transparency and accountability in government, on the ongoing saga of missing loot from the APD evidence room, and the APD’s unwillingness to release details of an evidence-room audit.

From Forbes’s post:

The Asheville Police Department evidence room had a problem: Large amounts of guns, drugs and money were missing. According to a partial audit, at least 115 items were gone from an evidence room that was in deep disarray.

This news rocked the city. Pending cases were dismissed or delayed. The State Bureau of Investigation swept in, sealing up the evidence room and launching an probe. At an Asheville City Council meeting, District Attorney Ron Moore publicly criticized the APD leadership. The city government shelled out $175,000 for a full audit, and the police chief resigned.

During local government elections later that year, many citizens questioned how much they could trust law enforcement.

The audit was completed in January this year, but it wasn’t made public. As a local reporter, I figured that at least an executive summary detailing how many items were missing would be released. It wasn’t.

In late January, after no response from multiple phone calls, I faxed an open-records request to the district attorney’s office. We usually email requests, but according to his secretaries, Moore never checks his email. Neither Moore nor anyone in the DA’s office replied.

Read the full post here.