IMPD Claims It Accidentally Destroyed Cocaine Evidence For Drug Dealer's Trial, Along With Evidence In 20 Other Cases

IMPD Chief Rick Hite has confirmed to Fox59 News' Russ McQuaid that clerks in the department's property control room inadvertently destroyed cocaine being held for the pending trial of an accused drug dealer, Marlon Long, last October while clerks were supposedly shuffling evidence during a conversion to a new computer system. About one kilo of cocaine with a street value of approximately $30,000 was destroyed, along with 149 other pieces of evidence affecting about 20 cases. “We’ve identified 149 pieces of which 89 pieces were salvaged so that means there were about 20 cases that were impacted by that,” said IMPD Chief Rick Hite. Despite the loss of the primary evidence in Long's case, McQuaid reports that he was nonetheless convicted during his jury trial last week using photographs and lab test results. This comes just two years after the department's public embarrassment from the mishandling of blood alcohol evidence for the trial of former IMPD Officer David Bisard, who killed one motorcyclist and injured two others critically while driving his police cruiser on duty drunk.