Gwinnett DA investigates missing drugs

By Andria Simmons

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Gwinnett officials should say this week whether there will be prosecutions for an undisclosed amount of cocaine that went missing from Gwinnett County Police headquarters last year.

County District Attorney Danny Porter said he plans to finish reviewing the investigation conducted by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation this week. Then he'll hold a joint news conference with Gwinnett County Police Chief Charles Walters to announce the findings.

Gwinnett Police spokesman Cpl. Edwin Ritter declined to discuss the results of the investigation prior to a the news conference.

"Chief Walters expects to be notified of the DA’s findings when they have completed their review," Ritter said. "Details of this investigation will be provided then by the chief of police in conjunction with the District Attorneys office."

Porter said Friday that he was still mulling whether to seek criminal charges in the case.

In March 2010, Walters called upon the GBI to determine how the drugs went missing from a narcotics locker in the vice unit. Walters has said he'll recommend punishment for any administrative violations found and stand behind the GBI's findings.

The case has been in Porter's hands since October, when the GBI completed its investigation. Porter said he was unable to resolve it sooner because of a recent special purpose grand jury investigation into county land deals. That 10-month-long probe resulted in the resignation of the county chairman and indictment of a sitting commissioner.

Porter said he also has been delayed by his medical problems. Porter was scheduled to undergo surgery at the end of last year and is still awaiting it.

The missing drugs were the latest in a series of public embarrassments that exposed mismanagement and sloppy bookkeeping inside the vice unit, which conducts investigations into prostitution and drugs.

Two former Gwinnett County narcotics investigators were arrested in October 2009, one of whom was the unit's former supervisor, Maj. David Butler. Butler is charged with theft by taking, violating the oath of a public officer and three counts of credit card fraud. He is accused of taking $4,000 in "flash money" from a safe in the department's Special Investigations Section. Arrest warrants also show Butler used county funds to pay for a motel room and items at an adult novelty store.

Officer Vennie Harden was charged with three counts of first-degree forgery and violating the oath of a public officer for allegedly forging a supervisor's name to authorize a payment of county funds on three occasions.

A January 2010 audit of the unit's "buy money" account uncovered inconsistent training methods and incomplete safeguards surrounding the money made available to investigators to make undercover drug buys.

Gwinnett police asked the county to review the account after a $1,200 overage appeared. The county's performance analysis division determined the $1,200 overage was caused by imprecise bookkeeping.