Pct. 4 part of larger pattern

Evidence-keeping sloppy in 4 of 8 constable’s offices

With Harris County’s Precinct 4 Constable’s Office mired in scandal over the improper destruction of 21,000 pieces of evidence, serious evidence cataloging and control problems also have been uncovered in the constables’ offices in Precincts 3, 6 and 7, according to interviews and audits obtained by the Houston Chronicle.

While there is no proof yet that evidence has been unlawfully destroyed in those other three offices, 2,000 items were initially reported missing in Precinct 3; guns, jewelry, electronics and cash were misplaced in Precinct 6; and Precinct 7’s evidence room has been described as “a shambles.”

In Precinct 4, where the evidence destruction scandal is still unfolding, prosecutors so far have dismissed

100 criminal cases and are still determining howmany convictions could be affected by years of careless work blamed on a corporal fired for illegally disposing of drugs, guns and evidence. The episode remains the subject of a criminal probe.

Only time will tell whether chaotic evidence handling practices reported in Precincts 3, 6 and 7 will result in case dismissals, appeals or further investigations.

Harris County auditors in May 2015 uncovered evidence problems — never made public — in a review of the overstuffed property room inside the Precinct 6 Constable’s Office in the East End. There, auditors reported finding 28 percent of the evidence missing along with $54,000 in cash in a review of a sample of 799 items, the audit shows. Their visit to the office came only months after the previous constable, Victor Treviño, resigned after pleading guilty to misappropriating money from a charity her an out of his office. DA notified

Constable Heliodoro Martinez, who replaced Treviño, said in an interview Friday that he immediately contacted the Harris County district attorney after receiving those results. It took five months for a team of two Harris County sheriff’s deputies and two of his own officers to locate the missing cash and other items. Martinez said he is still trying to impose order in an evidence room that hadn’t been cleaned out or organized in 26 years.

Unlike the Precinct 4 scandal, neither defense attorneys nor front-line prosecutors have been notified to review cases. So far, county lawyers have not deemed that any notifications or criminal investigations are necessary.

“To this point, we haven’t been made aware of any pending cases that have been affected in any way, shape or form,” Martinez said.

JoAnne Musick, a defense attorney who is past president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, said she is skeptical that no cases have been adversely affected.

“Every property custodian comes in and testifies how great their system is — but in these audits that’s not what they’re finding,” she said. “They’re having to dig stuff up. … How do you know it’s not been tampered with, it’s not altered, it’s not decayed?”

Harris County elected constables exist under a system set up during the days of the Old West that divided the county into areas that are now policed by large scattered agencies with dozens of officers and multimillion-dollar budgets. So far, four out of eight have reported property room problems. Those reports have county officials calling for reforms to evidence rooms — and to the county’s own auditing process.

Under state law, the Harris County auditor, an independent official who is appointed by the Harris County district judges, has historically performed major audits of county officeholders only when those elected offices change hands — and no Harris County constable’s evidence rooms had ever been audited before 2013, several county officials said.

Over the years, auditors employed a standard checklist to ensure whenever an office changes hands that no county computers, cars, EZ-tags or other equipment disappeared and that the bank balances in the constable’s accounts matched other records. It was only in the last three years that auditors began to try to locate a test sample of items in county evidence rooms during those reviews, records show. Series of reviews

After finding problems in both Precinct 4 and Precinct 6, Harris County auditors this summer initiated a series of reviews focusing solely on evidence rooms, records show.

In July, auditors reported they were unable to find 2,000 items from older cases in a review of the Bay townbased Precinct 3 constable’s evidence room. Officials say they later located at least 1,500 items, according to reports and interviews. Jeff McShan, the Harris County DA’s spokesman, said Friday the Precinct 3 constable has only begun to attempt to tie those items to criminal cases to ensure that none was affected.

On Thursday, the DA’s office sent emails advising prosecutors and defense attorneys that Harris County auditors inspecting Precinct 7 in June found evidence there in shambles. In an interview, Constable May Walker admitted that her property room was a mess and that no one could initially find anything after the custodian of evidence retired. Walker says she’s now found the items. That audit, though, has not yet been completed, and the auditor’s office declined comment.

“We are not directing Harris County to do audits — and we are not involved in the audits themselves,” McShan said. “They came to us yesterday with a report, and we acted on that report.”

The Harris County audit reports are relatively dry affairs — none comes with highlighted findings. No officeholders receive grades for their performance.

Barbara Schott, the county auditor, has maintained a low profile and is retiring at the end of the year. Over the years, her audits have mainly requested elected officeholders to voluntarily address a checklist of shortcomings. County officials are routinely sent copies of the reports, but two chief district judges, the county judge and county commissioners told the Chronicle they were never made aware of major problems with missing evidence at any constable’s offices until the problems at Precinct 4 became public in August.

The Chronicle sent

copies of critical audits to several county officials, including the public defender, who said they had never previously reviewed any of the findings.

Harris County Judge Ed Emmett was especially critical of Schott’s style.

“In light of recent reports regarding missing and destroyed evidence in Harris County constables’ offices, I believe it is more important than ever that the residents of Harris County have a fair, impartial and aggressive Harris County auditor to help detect and prevent such problems in the future,” he said. “County auditors, who are appointed by state district court judges, are key to ensuring that residents and county officials alike can be confident in the integrity of their county government.”

Harris County Precinct 4’s property room problems weren’t discovered by county auditors, who visited the department in late 2015. Their visit came about six months after the former Precinct 4 constable, Ron Hickman, had become the Harris County sheriff and just before officers wrongfully purged thousands of items of evidence by hauling it away to an incinerator.

Their report issued in June 2016 doesn’t mention any missing evidence. But it did raise concerns about the department’s lack of oversight of about $100,000 in cash stored in that same room. Apparently, auditors either did not check, or failed to notice, that the officer had not sought court orders to destroy evidence in previous purges. Auditors officials say Precinct 4 failed to tell them about the firing of the property room manager before the audit was issued.

Both Susan Brown and Robert Schaffer, the county’s two chief district judges, told the Chronicle they were unaware of the county auditor’s recent reviews of evidence rooms — or that missing evidence problems had been discovered anywhere besides Precinct 4. Schott’s upcoming retirement may be a good time, Schaffer said, to see if “any different policies or procedures need to be put in place.”

After learning of their evidence room problems, both Herman in Precinct 4 and Martinez in Precinct 6 immediately contacted the Harris County attorney, the Harris County DA and others for assistance to address shortcomings identified by the auditors and by their own subsequent internal investigations.

Several Harris County officials told the Chronicle it’s time to improve its audits so important findings are red-flagged, publicized and more quickly addressed. Some also said it’s time to consider whether the county should create a central evidence room under the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. ‘The common goal’

Harris County Commissioner Jack Cagle praised Herman for quickly alerting other officials to the problems — and for seeking an outside specialized auditor to improve his own evidence room. Cagle said he sees this as an opportunity to re-evaluate the county constable’s evidence operations, improve the audit process and to consider creating an evidence room in the sheriff’s office that would be a “gold standard.”

“I think we need to review all of these property rooms,” he said. “At the end of the day, it’s the common goal that you want to protect the victim of crimes and if you fail, you open the door to injustice.”

In an interview Friday, Precinct 6 Constable Martinez recalled the huge mess he found in an overstuffed office that passed as an evidence room when he was appointed in November 2014. Evidence was stored in unmarked paper sacks. Guns and other property were stacked in no particular order, and many labels were either illegible or missing. County auditors didn’t issue their subsequent report until May 2015.

In the aftermath, Martinez decided not to fire the department’s longtime property room officer, instead blaming the previous administration for the disarray. Time to get out?

After the initial review to find missing evidence, the job of reviewing 26 years of piled-up property continues. For more than a year now, Martinez said his office has delivered regular reports on attempts to reorganize evidence to both the Harris County attorney and the Harris County DA.

So far, neither agency has decided it was necessary to launch a criminal investigation or notify the public, defense attorneys or pros- ecutors about any of the problems uncovered, Martinez and others said.

Martinez lost the Democratic primary last spring and will leave office at the end of the year. But he, too, wonders if it would be better if constables got out of the evidence room business entirely and allowed the sheriff’s office to run a larger and more sophisticated evidence room to serve all eight constables.

“To me it made sense — they’re in the property room business,” he said. “If one constable would do it, I would think everyone else should fall in line.”