State police investigating whether drugs missing from Schaumburg PD
Illinois State Police are investigating whether heroin linked to a teenager's fatal drug overdose went missing after being turned over to the Schaumburg Police Department last year.
Village Manager Ken Fritz said the discrepancy between the amount of heroin believed to have been turned in and what the department now has in evidence doesn't appear related to the arrest of three former officers on drug conspiracy charges earlier this month. But the discrepancy came to light as a result of the village's internal investigation of the three officers, he said.
Fritz and state police said they couldn't comment further because it is an ongoing investigation.
But a Schaumburg official familiar with the investigation confirmed that the discrepancy involves the number of bags of heroin a Schaumburg woman found on her property after her 19-year-old son's September overdose.
She turned the bags over to the police hoping they could trace it to whoever sold her son drugs, but the Schaumburg official said she is claiming she took a photograph of 11 bags of heroin before submitting them, when the police evidence log registered only nine.
After reading newspaper accounts of the three undercover officers' arrests on charges that they had sold marijuana and cocaine taken from crime scenes, she called the police department to make sure the evidence she'd submitted was still intact, the Schaumburg official said.
The state police investigation is trying to determine whether the discrepancy is a result of a miscount or some other cause, sources said.