It all started when a pawn shop over in Humble, Texas, was subjected to a search by the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives. ATF had a warrant, and they took possession of 112 guns that — come to find out — were last seen in the evidence locker of a Texas police department.
How’d they get into a pawn shop from a police evidence room? No one knew, and an investigation began.
Now, it seems that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Texas Rangers are working together to solve this mystery. Their latest tally? Over 500 guns are missing from the Cleveland Police Department.
While the FBI and the Texas Rangers both keep their ongoing investigations pretty darn quiet until they’re good and ready to reveal things, they do have to file a document in court now and then in order to do their job. And, the media has been monitoring court documents with both the Dallas Morning News and the Houston Chronicle keeping tabs on this Missing Gun Mystery.
Piecemealing so far, we know that a Liberty County Sheriff’s Department Captain, name of Harold Kelley, together with some others whose names we don’t know (yet) were allegedly in a gun-trafficking scheme. Seems Captain Kelley was the Custodian of the Evidence Room, and had one of only two keys for the place. Who had the other key? Man name of Henry Patterson … Henry was serving as the assistant police chief at the time.
And, here’s the smoking gun — Kelley’s signature was on the official evidence files for 98 of those guns found in the Humble pawn shop. He’d signed to confirm that the guns had been destroyed.
What about the rest of the 500? The Texas Rangers and the FBI are out there, looking for them. Betcha they find them, too ….
Thank you for posting this. Evidence management is often looked at as an after thought. In reality it is a science. It has legal ramifications as serious as those of fingerprint or DNA analysis. Few agencies are paying the proper attention to this subject.
Evidence management is an easy place to win or loose a case at trial. It can make or break the image of a department in the eyes of your potential jury pool; the local voting citizenry. Organizations such as TAPEIT exist in this state and are currently under utilized. With the trend in laws that require ever increasing storage times and more sophesticated record keeping it is time to end the practice of turning the janitors closet into an evidence locker and running things however you feel like it. At the very least our legal system’s integrity requires that everyone be on the same page. Isn’t it time for uniform statewide guidelines?