CHICAGO: GUNS, DRUGS, RAPE KITS ROTTING IN CLOSED POLICE HQ

Evidence Found Rotting in Closed Ill. Police HQ
AP / March 20, 2010
Nearly 200 guns, narcotics and rape kits rotting in an unplugged refrigerator were left behind by a police department that shut down two years ago.

CHICAGO - A sheriff's department in suburban Chicago has been shocked to find a roomful of evidence left behind by a village police department that shut down two years ago -- including a moldy sexual assault kit that authorities said linked a man to the 2006 rape of a 13-year-old girl, nearly 200 guns and hundreds of bags of narcotics, officials said Friday.

In all, seven rape kits had been left rotting in an unplugged refrigerator in the former Ford Heights Police Department, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said. The guns had not been registered with the state as having been seized by police, and Dart's spokesman Steve Patterson said none of the DNA evidence found matches anyone in the state's database.

"You're not talking about ineptness, neglect, you're talking about outrageous conduct of a police department that didn't care about the residents out there," Dart said.

(snip)

That was when deputies opened the door to the evidence room.

Detectives were stunned by what they learned about the sexual assault of the girl -- and the apparent lack of any meaningful investigation of a case in which there was a great deal of evidence against one man.

"What happened to this girl is unconscionable," said Dart, whose office
arrested 27-year-old Marquis Deering this week. "She thought nothing was going to happen to him."

READ ABOUT NEGLECTED DNA EVIDENCE AGAINST MARQUIS DEERING...
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/03/20/evidence-rotting-closed-ill-police-hq/?test=latestnews