John Boyle of the Asheville Citizen-Times smells blood in the water over two recent Asheville Police Department scandals – the mishandling of police department property room evidence, and the sexual harassment allegations of a former officer against her supervising officer.
Boyle stops short of calling for the removal of Police Chief Bill Hogan, but Boyle lets him have it with both barrels:
The very same Ron Moore, who is now having to review 2,200 cases because of missing evidence in the APD, ripped Hogan for his sluggish response to the whole crisis. Hogan apparently sat on preliminary results of a partial audit that showed 161 items missing out of a sample of 807 items.
The evidence room has 14,000 high-risk items, so extrapolating that 20 percent rate of missing evidence suggests some 2,800 items could be gone.
“It’s incomprehensible to me how anybody would think they are not obligated to tell the Office of the District Attorney that at first blush they had a 20 percent problem,” Moore said. “I can’t answer why they did not tell us.”
It is mind-boggling, isn’t it? A guy charged with possession of 397 oxycodone pills essentially walks, a rape case is compromised and other cases may be lost, and the police chief just assumes evidence was misplaced.
Sweet mother of mistrials.
Hogan explained the delay by saying he assumed the items had been misplaced, and he said if he had suspected tampering of evidence he would have alerted Moore “immediately.”
A 20 percent “misplacement rate” doesn’t send up some red flags? That’s not worth notifying the DA about?
Sure, this whole mess may well end up at the feet of evidence room employees, including the longtime evidence room manager, William Lee Smith, who was placed on paid investigative suspension Jan. 25 and resigned Feb. 18.
But Hogan is ultimately responsible. It’s his department.
His response to all this strikes me as an arrogant reaction, especially considering the relative freshness of the Medford missing evidence case.
6 Comments
http://ashvegas.squarespace.com/journal/2010/4/8/a-question-of-leadership-at-asheville-city-hall.html#comments
Dixiegirlz, yes, it does. Hogan is responsible for his department, but he answers to assistant City Manager Jeff Richardson, who answers to Gary Jackson. I don't know what it's going to take to get better management in place.
Eric getting "demoted' to a lesser position is more of the same baloney that we saw with the fireman who got six months for shooting and unarmed citizen. The good ol boy network sure takes care of their own. He should have been fired. What a disgrace, not only the police department, but the city of Asheville.
Mr. Hogan absolutely must go. Gary Jackson, too, as far as I'm concerned.
Jason, doesn't this come under the purview of the City Manager? And tie into the editorial you wrote about a year ago….something along the lines of leadership leaving much to be desired.
Most employers (the City included) have a so-called zero tolerance policy regarding harassment of any kind ….
Mr Boyle is right …. this guy should have been FIRED long ago.