Inadequate or overflowing Garda storage facilities have left some personnel exposed to “a strong smell of drugs or other substances” in their workplace.
Some Garda storage facilities around the country contained so much seized cash that the personnel who worked there feared for their safety, a Garda Inspectorate report has also found.
When staff raised the issue of how drugs were stored with a chief superintendent because this “was an unsafe working environment”, they were told the Garda National Repository was full. That meant no items could be transferred to it for long-term storage.
And while some items in storage had been earmarked for disposal in 2018, there was a lack of clarity around how that could be done.
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The Garda Property and Exhibits Management System (Pems) reviewed by the Garda Inspectorate is used to record and store important evidence. This includes items for ongoing investigations into big crimes, including gangland cases and sexual crime investigations.
A review team from the inspectorate “observed fridges containing forensic exhibits” as well as cash and firearms storage arrangements.
“Most fridges were full, exhibits dated back several years and no one was assigned overall responsibility for the management of them,” it concluded. “Unnecessarily large amounts of cash were stored, some of which could be lodged in banks.”
The inspectorate examined Pems as part of a follow-up to its 2014 report on crime investigation, with shortcomings and inconsistencies identified under the new review, but progress made overall.
For example, some Pems storage units had “lock, keypad and swipe access”, others had “lock only” security in place. In some Pems facilities cages had been installed for the secure storage of cash, drugs and guns, and these cages were only opened when two personnel were present. But in other locations, no such cages had been installed.
“This review found that Pems stores were holding large quantities of cash, drugs, firearms and ammunition,” noted the Garda Inspectorate review, published on Monday. “In [one] store, a Pems manager expressed concern about their personal safety given the value of exhibits, including money held in storage.”
As a result, it was recommended that “crime prevention officers should be tasked to conduct a review of the security arrangements for all places where property and exhibits are stored”.
Though the Pems system handled 10,000 new cases each year, it was not linked to the Garda’s other IT systems, including the email network, and this needed to be resolved, said the inspectorate.
There was a “lack of clarity regarding the correct process to be followed at each stage” of the process of properly bagging, recording, handling and storing drugs to be put into Pems. Some gardaí also “raised concerns that the integrity of the chain of evidence could be compromised” as some items and evidence were recorded electronically and others in paper-based documents.
This was happening because the barcode scanners needed to manage exhibits electronically were not available throughout the force.
When exhibits were checked out of the Pems system, there was no guidance about how long that could be permitted or how the exhibits should be handled and stored when checked out. No audit had been conducted of the items “temporarily checked out of the store into the custody of individual members” and this was “an organisational risk”.
“There was also a lack of awareness of the process to be followed if an exhibit was missing,” said the inspectorate.
The review of Pems by the Garda Inspectorate found significant progress had been made since 2014 but it recommended improvements around information technology, safety and better training. Just 18 per cent of gardaí had been trained properly in how to use the Pems IT.
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