Thousands of dollars missing from Richmond PD property room

RICHMOND, TX Neither the police department nor the city will say much about the inquiry, other than confirming that there is one. The one thing they can say for sure is that they can't find $3,500 in cash which was seized in a 2007 drug case.

Like every police agency, the Richmond Police Department stores evidence inside its property room. Thousands of pieces of evidence are in three rooms, all locked and all with cameras trained on them. Richmond's police chief says they started an inventory here in 2008 and since that time have determined they can't account for $3,500.

"We don't know. It's not where it's supposed to be and that's bad," said Richmond Police Chief Bill Whitworth.

He can't say if the money was stolen or if it's just missing, but Chief Whitworth did tell us one of the officers who was supposed to be in charge of evidence was fired after the money was determined to be unaccounted for in December 2009. He says he gave the evidence technician 24 hours to show him where the money was and that the tech could not.

"We should be able to know exactly where that cash was and the records did not indicate where the cash was, so I felt obligated to terminate the employee responsible for recording that information," said Chief Whitworth.

He adds that he doesn't see this potential security breach at his department's evidence room as a newsworthy item. He says it has not been proven yet that any crime occurred.

"We might still have the money in our evidence room," Chief Whitworth said.

Whitworth did tell us the Texas Rangers offered to aid in this investigation, however for now he says the department will investigate this incident themselves.