Potential problems found in police storage of drugs

Some of the drugs seized by Boston police are not where they should be in the department's central drug depository, where evidence such as cocaine, OxyContin and marijuana is stored, the acting police commissioner, Albert Goslin, said yesterday.

The disarray of the drug depository, discovered during a police audit, has prompted concern among officials, but Goslin said it's too early to determine whether evidence is missing, because the audit is not complete. He did not indicate the amount or types of drugs that have not been found.

Goslin said the disorganization in the drug warehouse concerns him because of the possibility that drug evidence could be missing, but at this point, nothing points to police corruption. ``It's a lot of stuff and a major burden on us," he said. ``It's contraband. It's illegal. If the audit doesn't go the way it should go, then we'll look into it."

Three officers have spent the past six weeks combing through drug evidence from 190,000 cases, some dating back more than 20 years, because the department is modernizing the tightly controlled facility, Goslin said. The department wants to find an easier way to track the evidence; officers are moving the drugs to a different part of the building.

Some evidence that auditors had initially thought was missing was found elsewhere in the Hyde Park depository. ``They'd find things that were supposed to be in one place and would be three bins over," Goslin said. ``It's a huge nightmare and problem . . . I haven't found stuff missing but at this point, I can't say."

The site of the evidence and where the drugs were supposed to be according to a log book sometimes do not match, Goslin said.

According to Boston Police Department rules, drugs, upon seizure, are temporarily stored in a safe at the district station before going to a central drug depository.