Korean Job Discussion Forums

[madoka]

http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20100319/39ab223a-a77e-44bd-82cc-5b04dbbb89b8

A suburban police department left behind a roomful of evidence when it closed two years ago � including a moldy sexual assault kit that authorities said linked a man to the 2006 rape of a 13-year-old girl, nearly 200 guns and hundreds of bags of narcotics, officials said Friday.

In all, seven rape kits had been left rotting in an unplugged refrigerator in the former Ford Heights Police Department, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said. The guns had not been registered with the state as having been seized by police, and Dart's spokesman Steve Patterson said none of the DNA evidence found matches anyone in the state's database.

You're not talking about ineptness, neglect, you're talking about outrageous conduct of a police department that didn't care about the residents out there," Dart said.

His deputies have been patrolling Ford Heights for the past few years after financial problems forced the village to lay off most of its 16 police officers. The sheriff's department took over completely in 2008, after two years of sharing duties with what was left of the police department, because the last few Ford Heights officers simply stopped showing up for work, Dart said.

"They just vanished," he said. Cook County deputies didn't use the police department's headquarters, because the former chief, Earl Bridges, continued working in some capacity regarding code enforcement. But Dart said he became uncomfortable with Bridges remaining in the building after it became clear the sheriff's department would be handling law enforcement in Ford Heights for the foreseeable future.

"At that point, I said enough's enough, he's got to go, we're taking over," said the sheriff, who ordered Bridges to leave last spring.

That was when deputies opened the door to the evidence room.

Detectives were stunned by what they learned about the sexual assault of the girl � and the apparent lack of any meaningful investigation of a case in which there was a great deal of evidence against one man.

"What happened to this girl is unconscionable," said Dart, whose office arrested 27-year-old Marquis Deering this week. "She thought nothing was going to happen to him."

Ford Heights police never interviewed Deering, whose criminal history includes 15 arrests since 2001 and a conviction for aggravated vehicular manslaughter, Dart said. He said it's unclear whether they ever interviewed the girl.

Ford Heights police received a report from police in nearby Chicago Heights who interviewed the girl at a Chicago Heights hospital, Dart said. They also received a state crime lab report that concluded DNA linked Deering to the assault.

"They had it," Dart said. "And they did nothing with it."

[Street Magic]

Here's a relevant court precedent for law enforcement neglect:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia

[djsmnc]

It's pretty sick if you start thinking about what exactly in the kit was rotting.

[Sleepy in Seoul]

What kind of training do these police receive? Are Police Chiefs appointed as a result of experience or is it simply politics (as I've read)? It seems that any kind of accountability is sadly lacking...

[bacasper]

Isn't the bigger story that of municipalities unable to pay for basic services?