A former Dunmore police sergeant who took and used drugs from a borough evidence room forced prosecutors to drop cases against three suspects, Lackawanna County District Attorney Brian Gallagher said Thursday.
The suspects were “street level dealers,” Gallagher said.
“Any pending cases in which the evidence bags were tampered with were withdrawn,” he said. “We cannot proceed with criminal charges in cases in which the evidence was tampered with.”
Stephon Burgette, 41, who pleaded guilty to taking drugs from the evidence room, is more than three months into a Lackawanna County Drug Court treatment program, Gallagher said.
Gallagher said Burgette pleaded guilty and entered the treatment court program Feb. 24. The program lasts about 18 months, though sometimes individuals need longer because of “setbacks or small violations, which is common,” Gallagher said.
“He has to complete the entire program,” Gallagher said. “There are four phases including rehab. Outpatient, (he’s) required to go to AA/NA (Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous) meetings. He’s randomly tested and he has to appear before the treatment court judge every Thursday."
Burgette pleaded guilty to possessing cocaine and fentanyl, tampering with evidence and obstructing the administration of justice.
A decade as a cop
Burgette started working as a Dunmore officer on Aug. 10, 2015. He was charged Jan. 12. Burgette resigned the same month amid an internal borough investigation of what happened, Mayor Max Conway said in a text.
"He can never be a police officer again," Gallagher said. "He's not going to be able to (serve) as a police officer in the state of Pennsylvania ... because of the nature of the charges that he pleaded guilty to."
An arrest affidavit says Burgette’s “paramour” called borough police at 12:45 a.m. Nov. 28, about two hours after his Thanksgiving Day shift ended, worried that he hadn't come home.
Officers found Burgette unconscious and “slumped over his desk” in the police department. Responding medics noticed “a brown, unsealed evidence bag in Burgette’s office.”
“Burgette admitted to taking cocaine from the evidence room and ingesting it for a period of approximately three months,” detectives Chris Kolcharno and Michelle Mancuso wrote in the affidavit.
DA had to withdraw drug cases
Gallagher said he had no choice but to withdraw the charges against the three suspected drug dealers.
"Legally and ethically I am not putting someone's liberty at stake if the evidence that is the basis for the charge is tampered with, let alone tampered with by a police officer," he said. "Ultimately, those were three individuals who were charged in felony drug cases with dealing drugs. Now, were they in the grand scheme of things big time suppliers of cocaine? No, they weren't. They were street-level dealers, but nonetheless, they were felony charges that ... we had to withdraw ... not only because it's the legal thing to do, but it's the right thing to do."
A basic element of law enforcement is ensuring "a chain of custody" of evidence, which means logging every time someone touches it, he said. Burgette broke the chain.
Only three cases affected
Gallagher said he knew of no other affected cases “that we are prosecuting.”
He said he didn’t know if cases involving summary charges were affected because they never reach the district attorney’s office.
Summary charges can be charges of disorderly conduct, loitering, harassment and low-level retail theft.
“I’m unaware of anything on our end,” Conway said. "We haven't heard of anything being impacted."
Gallagher said Burgette began by targeting older drug evidence from completed cases before tampering with evidence from pending cases.
"It's a learning lesson for, I think, all police departments," he said. "At the end of the day, ... we should be inventorying all of our evidence rooms in Lackawanna County, and then" disposing of evidence no longer needed.
"Usually, maintaining evidence for longer than seven years is unnecessary."
His office has begun and this summer will escalate working closely with local police departments to destroy evidence no longer necessary to prosecute a case, he said. That will require court permission.
"There's no reason for those items to be taking up room in an evidence room, there's no reason for them to be sitting in there and have anyone have access to them," Gallagher said.
