The Salt Lake City Police Department on Friday released details of an investigation into a former civilian evidence room employee who failed a drug test.
Chief Mike Brown said that while investigators do not believe any evidence was compromised, they wanted to inform the public “in the interest of transparency.”
The employee, who was put on leave Aug. 15, is “no longer working with the department,” Brown said during a news conference. Police declined to say whether the worker had resigned or was fired.
A supervisor noticed the employee was ”exhibiting very unusual behavior,” Brown said, and she tested positive for drugs. Brown declined to say which drugs were in her system.
Fully staffed, the evidence room employs eight workers, said Detective Greg Wilking. Currently, there are six who work there.
The police department contacted Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill’s office the day the employee was placed on leave and has asked Unified Police Department to conduct a criminal investigation, police said. In addition, SLCPD has created an “audit and compliance unit,” consisting of a sergeant and four officers, to look into the matter.
Investigators will go through 200,000 pieces of evidence — 40,000 of which are drug related, Brown said. The audit is in its ”infancy,” he added, but the timeline for the investigation is unknown.
“It could take six months. It could take two years,” Brown said.
Brown described the situation with the former employee as ”an outlier,” emphasizing that other members of the department are ”ethical with integrity.”
Gill said no arrests had been made as a parallel investigation by his office and the two police departments goes forward. He did not say which particular charges his office was considering.