Posted:
Halifax Regional Police (HRP) has completed its final drug exhibit audit report, including details of the complete inventory of all drug exhibits. The report, which was presented to the HRM Board of Police Commissioners (BOPC) today, also outlined significant efforts made to address issues around adherence to policy and procedure, training, proper documentation, quality assurance, supervision and infrastructure.
“Our extensive, self-initiated audit helped bring to light significant process gaps and a lack of policy adherence over the decades. This audit, along with the progress on all 34 recommendations, demonstrates that we took this matter seriously to address gaps that caused these issues in the first place,” said HRP Chief of Police Jean-Michel Blais.
“An improved system is now in place to ensure procedures are strictly adhered to by all officers,” said Chief Blais. “We’ve also put in place an annual inventory of drug-related exhibits to further ensure officers are continuously adhering to the enhanced measures.”
Consistent with the initial audit and the factors identified at the time, many exhibits could not be physically located as part of the overall inventory review. The Secondary Review identified similar trends and process gaps that were found with exhibits being deemed as missing or misplaced in the initial audit.
The Review Team identified and reconciled all drug exhibits that showed as missing in police’s Records Management System (RMS). The missing/misplaced exhibits included 293 cash exhibits (of which 255 were located), 331 large drug exhibits (of which 68 were located) and 2,628 small drug, paraphernalia and miscellaneous non-drug exhibits (of which 140 were located).
Using a comprehensive methodology to locate each exhibit (e.g. interviews, electronic reviews and physical reviews of exhibit rooms and written journals), the Review Team believes that the exhibits that could not be physically located were destroyed and found no evidence of misuse or misappropriation.
With the progress being made on the audit recommendations and many additional initiatives as outlined in the final audit report, significant improvements have been made to both exhibit handling and accountability and ensure that our organization maintains public confidence.
Final audit report submitted to the BOPC