SFPD drug-lab problems could go back years

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

(04-01) 18:56 PDT SAN FRANCISCO --

Four grams of cocaine being used as evidence in a federal racketeering trial vanished from a sample weighed in 2005 by a San Francisco police lab technician now suspected of stealing drugs, a Chronicle review of court transcripts has found.

The apparent disparity - which the technician explained as being the result of evaporation or possible mishandling by co-workers - has prompted the Police Department to widen its investigation into the drug analysis section of the department's crime lab, Assistant Police Chief Jeff Godown said Thursday.

Police now must determine whether possible thefts, sloppy evidence handling and other problems documented as having existed at the Hunters Point lab in 2009 actually began several years earlier.

The 2009 problems have already led prosecutors to dismiss hundreds of pending drug cases. The latest revelations mean that convictions that prosecutors have already won could also be at risk.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/01/BA3I1COB2O.DTL

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Every time I read a new development in the SFPD drug lab scandal I keep saying to myself: "The War on Drugs is and was always a joke."

I have a headline that's hardly been seen in most newspapers recently: "Wasteful spending on prosecuting drug offenses goes back decades"

........prosecuting cops (just like reg citizens) for crimes they commit AND send them to jail. This shit will NEVER stop unless you prosecute AND JAIL. Cops have been literally getting away with murder for decades and we all just sit back and yawn.