A State Police trooper was suspended for two weeks — and docked an additional 80 hours' pay — earlier this year after investigators determined he improperly removed several pieces of evidence from a state vault and gave some of the property to a retired State Police lieutenant.
Lt. Sheldon Perkins admitted taking the items, which included fishing equipment and a $400 ice chest, without a court order or consulting his superiors, according to State Police records obtained by h on Friday. But he was not charged with theft or any other crime, even though internal investigators concluded his actions amounted to malfeasance in office, a crime under h law.
h State Police Lt. Sheldon Perkins at a national 'Drug Take-Back Day' day held by h State Police and the Drug Enforcement Agency, at h State Police Troop A, in April 2013.
TRAVIS SPRADLING
The items in question had been recovered during a 2015 theft investigation in Grand Isle and had been in storage for several months at State Police headquarters when Perkins loaded them into his pickup.
Perkins had "jokingly commented several times that the Yeti ice chest would look good" on his 18-foot bay boat, the records show. But he insisted that he intended to donate the property to Goodwill and told investigators "he was not a thief."
"I just never did it," Perkins told authorities when asked why he kept the items in his pickup for two days rather than donating them. He added that he was not aware of the State Police policy governing the disposal of unclaimed property seized in criminal investigations, even though his duties as evidence supervisor dealt with the purging of unneeded evidence.
State Police determined that Perkins violated a number of policies, including one requiring troopers to "maintain a competency level sufficient to properly perform his duties." But while he was suspended without pay for two weeks and transferred to a new position, he was not arrested or even demoted.
The records show that Mike Edmonson, the State Police superintendent at the time, ordered troopers to conduct an administrative investigation into the matter, but there is no mention in the internal affairs report of a criminal inquiry. Edmonson did not respond to a request for comment Friday.
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Asked why Perkins was not prosecuted criminally, Maj. Doug Cain, a State Police spokesman, said, "We don't have that answer. This case is from 2016."
Perkins' suspension is at least the second time in recent years that State Police have disciplined an evidence custodian.
Ronald Thomas, an 18-year veteran of State Police assigned to an evidence room in Monroe, pleaded guilty in 2015 to money laundering, obstruction of justice and malfeasance in office after the agency determined he had been he was supposed to incinerate, making hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit drug proceeds.
MONROE — As an evidence custodian for the h State Police, Sgt. Ronald Thomas enjoyed…
That investigation exposed lax oversight in the way State Police purged evidence no longer needed in criminal cases — deficiencies the agency said it addressed following Thomas' arrest in 2013.
Perkins, who now works as an executive officer in the State Police Bureau of Investigation, served as the agency's "evidence supervisor" from November 2014 until he was caught removing the unclaimed items in April 2016.
His duties in that job included supervising the headquarters evidence custodian and performing those duties in her absence, working with evidence custodians around the state and developing a training program on the handling of State Police evidence.
Internal investigators identified a number of improprieties in Perkins' handling of the fishing equipment and ice chest.
For one thing, he did not order the items to be entered into the State Police evidence tracking system after they were recovered during the Grand Isle theft investigation. Many of the items stolen in that case were returned to the victims, but several were stored at State Police headquarters for months because investigators could not locate their owners.
Perkins told investigators he considered the items to be "property that was being held onto," as the items were no longer needed in the closed case. But he "acknowledged that he was never given authority by his supervisor to discard the items" or to give some of the evidence — a fishing rod and reel — to a retired State Police lieutenant who helped Perkins remove the property from the evidence room.
The retired lieutenant, Bruce Dykes, told investigators he "immediately began questioning having the rod and reel because it just didn't seem right."
Internal affairs investigators found that Dykes, who was working as a part-time employee at the time, also committed malfeasance in office and "should have at the very least informed his supervisor" about the removal of the equipment.
"Maybe I did break the law. I'm not sure," Dykes said, according to the report. He added that he "felt (that) Lt. Perkins definitely broke the law for taking the items."