Detroit cops lead the way

[CG6468]

Is anyone paying attention? Detroit crime lab embarrassment underscores institutional neglect
Published: Friday, May 27, 2011, 11:30 AM     Updated: Friday, May 27, 2011, 12:07 PM
By Darrell Dawsey

Detroit officials are making all of the right promises and pronouncements in the wake of revelations that the Detroit Police left behind thousands of rounds of live ammo, evidence kits, case files and other items when it shut down its troubled crime lab in 2008.

    May 27, Detroit Free Press: Detroit Police Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. said he is launching an investigation to determine what happened.

    "We'll get to the bottom of it in a very short order," Godbee pledged. "I appreciate the Free Press bringing this to our attention."

    Deputy Mayor Saul Green, who with then-Mayor Ken Cockrel Jr. ordered the closure of the lab, told police to secure the building and demanded answers.

    "Once we have a better sense of what happened, we'll know how to deal with this situation," Green said.

    The Free Press discovered the building, which at one time was a Detroit public school, was unsecured this week and found discarded evidence, buckets of live ammunition, bulletproof vests, cell phones, radios, printers, fax machines, clocks, jars of gunpowder and more than 100 bottles of chemicals, some of them toxic.

Somehow, though, the official outrage is less than assuring.

LINK: Detriot sucks