09/20/2022
I attended the $25,000 theft of money exculpatory evidence hearing as a spectator on Monday, September 19, 2022. I would like to say that I was shocked, but I was not. It's simply inexcusable that this investigation, which started in February 2021, is still pending. Nearly $25,000, that we know of, was stolen from the “secured” evidence room by an individual, or group of individuals, employed at the Pulaski Sheriff's Office. The theft started in 2015 until it was discovered in 2020.
If the $25,000 was stolen from anywhere else, law enforcement would have quickly conducted the investigation. The highly publicized arrest would have been made and followed up with numerous press releases, seeking pats on the back and political equity for a job well done.
Voters should pi**ed. This information was kept private during an ongoing sheriff's election, despite the fact that 2 of the candidates running for Sheriff were in supervisory roles. This was a legitimate election issue the voters should have been made aware of and for the candidates to address. How did this happen, how do they plan to make sure it doesn’t happen again, and were any of the officers under the supervision of the candidates involved? If so, what actions, or inaction, did the supervisor take, or not take, once they had knowledge of the subject? Instead, it appears that a concerted effort was made to keep the matter suppressed from the public so they could keep this “in house.”
Don't be fooled by the KSP. They are cooperating with the sheriff's office. It appears the KSP plans on, or at least planned upon, sweeping this matter under the rug. Perhaps this is no coincidence, considering the fact the Sheriff and the Major are both retired KSP. Perhaps this explains why the Sheriff's Office requested the KSP to investigate them. Wouldn’t we all like the benefit of hand picking our investigator if it were us criminal investigation? Rest assured, you would not be afforded such preferential treatment. The FBI should be investigating this matter because the victims of the theft were deprived of their civil rights under the color of law. The victims were arrested, their money seized and stolen without due process of law, all while they were prosecuted-- hence, the deprivation of civil rights under the color of law! Perhaps the task force relationships between the FBI and the sheriff's office also pays off in other ways when issues like this arise.
I hope that all parties and attorneys involved in the cases in which seized money was stolen from have ALL been notified so the appropriate actions can be taken. All of the cases the guilty officer or officers have been involved now need to be reviewed by everyone, not just the prosecuting agency that handled the matter. All of these matters may have been jeopardized. These notifications need to be made now because some people may still be incarcerated or living with the scarlet letter that results from a criminal records resulting from a frivolous criminal conviction. The ramifications go far beyond the stolen $25,000 that our tax payor funded insurance policy has already paid out.
If this theft scheme started in 2015, does that mean that evidence audits from 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and early 2020 did not catch this? How does that happen? Was more than one person involved in this scheme?
The testimony at the hearing revealed that the evidence custodian does not verify the contents inside the packages of evidence submitted by the investigating officer. Instead, the custodian merely logs what the submitting officer has reported is inside the evidence package. As such, there were no checks and balances in place? Why? At best, this is intentional incompetence. More likely, this is criminal intent because this is not the standard protocol used by any legitimate law enforcement agency.
I believe the KSP is still "investigating" the incident to keep the reports exempt from disclosure under the open records act. As long as the investigation is "pending" the KSP can keep the matter confidential under the open records act. I am starting to believe the KSP has no intention of arresting anyone in connection with the investigation. Again, the investigation has been pending since February 2021--19 months. I am familiar with these types of investigations and they do not take 19 months. The KSP is not waiting on complex lab results nor complex forensic accounting reports. More than sufficient time has passed for interrogations, forensic accountings, evidence procedure reviews etc. to occur. As such, the KSP intends or, at least intended, for this matter to be closed as “inconclusive” meaning the guilty party or parties keep their stolen money while continuing “to protect and serve.”
Most appalling through all of this is that the thief or thieves have worked and will continue working at the sheriff's office. Now we have a situation in which the criminal or criminals, if more than 1 person was involved in the $25,000 theft of seized evidence money, are investigating other criminals.
In closing, this is not an attack on law enforcement. I support law enforcement. At the very least, I expect them to be held to the same standards as anyone else. The good ol' boy system needs to be broken. Corruption should be exposed. The corrupt actors should suffer the same fate as any other similarly situated individual. The gun and badge are neither a license to steal nor an entitlement to special treatment, except in Pulaski County it appears.
An evidentiary hearing in a burglary case became the backdrop Monday for a Kentucky State Police (KSP) detective to publicly testify about the ongoing investigation of money missing from the
