KEEPING TABS ON EVIDENCE
Security enhanced after cocaine goes missing
Windsor police conducted a special inventory of its drug vault and installed a dozen additional cameras in and around the secure room after $25,000 worth of cocaine was discovered missing in 2013, Chief Al Frederick said Friday.
The moves came not because there was any belief the drugs had been stolen from the vault, but to “improve procedures,” Frederick told his masters on the Police Services Board.
Board members — and the chief himself — learned this week about the missing drugs after the Windsor Star reported on a Superior Court case about the cocaine.
The chief went into damage-control mode, visiting the drug vault for the first time in his 33 years on the force. He traced the paper trail on the missing cocaine and assigned senior officers to conduct another spot audit late Thursday night of the drug vault’s inventory.
Nothing was found amiss, the chief said Friday. “One hundred per cent compliance.”
The missing cocaine was seized from Miles Patrick Meraw, 30, on Aug. 21, 2013. Police arrested Meraw after tapping the phone of a drug dealer who sold him the drugs.
A police officer weighed and photographed the cocaine, and sent a sample to Health Canada for identification. Frederick said Friday it was when the paperwork certifying the sample as cocaine came back from the federal lab that the seized drugs couldn’t be located.
Meraw was convicted of possessing cocaine for the purpose of trafficking despite the police not being able to produce the drugs at trial.
According to a Dec. 24, 2013, report provided by police late Friday afternoon, then Supt. John St. Louis headed an internal investigation into the drug vault. He reviewed footage from the sole camera in the vault at the time and the list of key fobs used to unlock the door and gain access to the room. St. Louis concluded there had been no unauthorized entry into the drug vault, so the drugs must have been erroneously sent out for destruction.
The report from St. Louis said there had been a “bin-by-bin” audit of the inventory of the drug vault’s contents and the cocaine was not there.
But in a June 9, 2014, letter provided to defence lawyer Ken Marley through the federal drug prosecutor handling Meraw’s case, Const. Peter Mosher said “the search continues” for the missing drugs.
Marley said nine ounces of cocaine fills a zippered sandwich baggie to overflowing and could not have simply got stuck to another exhibit being removed from a shelf.
“It’s inconceivable that someone would be so inept,” he said of the possibility an officer would have simply grabbed the wrong exhibit.
But Frederick said that must be what happened because it has never occurred before.
“Of the 4,500 cases processed in the past 10 years, there has not been one other occurrence of missing, misplaced or destroyed narcotics or evidence.”
Members of the police services board were never notified until this week of the missing drugs nor the investigation that ensued. “I have no obligation to tell the board about an operational issue,” Frederick said.
Board members seemed satisfied to chalk the incident up to human error. But city Coun. Jo-Anne Gignac, longtime member of the police services board, asked pointed questions about why the board was not notified. She asked the chief to “tighten up communication.”
Mayor Drew Dilkens said he toured the drug vault himself early Friday morning and had officers detail procedures for him. “I’m satisfied in this particular matter,” Dilkens said. “There was human error involved here.”
Frederick said it was important to address the issue with the board Friday and invite reporters to hear it. “Whenever it can be construed as criticism of police or a direct criticism of police, I want to address that.”