Drugs, guns, and $400,000 missing from Braintree police

BRAINTREE — An audit of the Braintree Police Department’s troubled evidence room revealed that thousands of pieces of drug evidence, dozens of firearms, and over $400,000 of seized money had vanished, town officials said Wednesday.

The audit, which examined evidence going back to 1999, found that heat-sealed drug bags were torn open or cut; bags of cash were sliced open at the bottom; and at least 60 guns, including semiautomatic rifles, had disappeared.

“I find the auditor’s report of unaccounted for items and poor record keeping practices by the Police Department to be deeply troubling and unacceptable,” Mayor Joseph Sullivan said at a news conference Wednesday night. The town, he said, has asked the attorney general’s office to help investigate.

Braintree Police Chief Russell W. Jenkins ordered the audit this spring, after he began to suspect a problem. The officer who ran the evidence room killed herself in May, a week after the auditor spoke with her for the first time.

Read more: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/09/14/audit-details-evidence-missing-from-braintree-police-department/oj1mvfCDTh1OSCx3K0XkEN/story.html