Texas Police Department Missing Thousands of Items, Including Guns and Drugs
If most people take something from work and decide to keep it, it's usually something like a pen or office paper, maybe some post-it notes. Stealing from within a police department? That's a different category of work theft.
According to CBS News in Dallas, DeSoto Police have discovered they have a problem. During an audit of the DeSoto Police evidence room in April of 2022, police discovered the disappearance of drugs from a case back in January of 2022, but that's not all. According to CBS News, a property room consultant said the evidence room was a "mess". And that it had not been properly run for many years.
According to some of the findings there was homicide evidence from cold cases that were not logged into the system, and items from old cases that should have been destroyed but weren't. There were no integrity seals on evidence items either.
CBS reported that a confidential informant told police that a man named Carl Edmison had been stealing items. Edmison had run the evidence room in DeSoto for six years until the audit began, that's when he left to join the Midlothian Police Department.
Midlothian Police fired him in September of 2023 after evidence of "improper management" of the DeSoto Police evidence room came to light. CBS reported that this Spring, DeSoto police decided to do another investigation into Edmison.
According to an affidavit, a confidential informant told police Edmison had stolen from the property room for years, giving guns, tools, cameras, jewelry and other items as gifts. In April, police searched his home and said they found 18 guns in his master bedroom. DeSoto PD said 13 of them were from the property room. According to the affidavit, Edmison told investigators he knew it was wrong, "but once he took one it was difficult not to do it again."
Edmison is now charged with 13 counts of theft.
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