Honea Path Police, SLED Working to Find Missing Evidence, Records
Greg Wilson/Anderson Observer
When Honea Path Police Chief Chris Miller took the helm of the town’s police department last year, he ran into a situation he had not witnessed in almost 20 years in law enforcement.
Miller said the evidence room was a disorganized mess, with bags of evidence taken during arrest piled around the room, and essentially no filing system to properly identify and protect the items.
But potentially even more concerning to Miller, was at least a year’s worth of missing incident files.
The chief said he immediately contacted Honea Path Mayor Christopher Burton, the town council and asked the S.C. Law Enforcement Division to investigate the problem.
That was June 2023, and SLED’s investigation is ongoing, giving the large amount of material and potentially missing evidence involved.
“The chief and I requested SLED get involved to make it clear he was walking into a mess,” said Burton.
“We’ve been doing everything we can to cooperate with SLED and not get in their way,” said Miller.
SLED is investigating the potential of missing – or unaccounted for – money, bodycam footage, guns, cell phones and other evidence items. SLED is interviewing former employees and continuing sorting materials.
Miller said that the department has been unable to locate any incident reports for almost a year between 2020-2021.
“I called our IT people and they could not find any record of tickets or requests,” said Miller. This means that cases not already adjudicated would have to be dismissed.
Burton said it appeared that the disorganization of the evidence goes back 20 years, making the process of sorting through materials to determine ownership and to turn over whatever he finds to SLED such an enormous task he has hired an assistant to help with the operation.
Miller also said any money taken during the arrest of a suspect is required to be documented and deposited into interest-bearing checking accounts. So far two cases where suspects were arrested with cash on their persons have been identified where this did not happen.
One of the ways this problem was identified came from a complaint from a citizen that his money and cell phone had not been returned.
“We did pay a man $3,714 because nobody could find where his money was deposited and what happened to his cell phone,” said Burton. “So, we brought it before the council and paid him back from the general fund. We don’t know how long this investigation will last, but if we recoup that money, we are going to pay it back.”
Miller said the town is doing all it can to cooperate with SLED and is working to make sure that nothing gets in the way of their investigation.
“We want to make it clear that SLED is investigating because we asked them to,” said Burton. “They are not investigating the mayor or chief. They are here because we wanted them to come here and help us get things in order.”
Miller said he expects the investigation to take at least another year, as SLED and Honea Path methodically go through the evidence and records.
Miller said he has instituted a new reporting mechanism which includes hard copies of all incident reports and a systematic way to file evidence going forward. New body cameras and software are also now in place thanks to a grant.
“We can prevent this from ever happening again,” said Miller.
In the meantime, the police department wants to continue to work with SLED to make sure to return items that belong to citizens.
“We want to return people’s property they deserve to get back,” said Miller. “Everything deserves to be investigated. We’re absolutely certain we will work this out in time.”
Miller urged citizens to call him at 864-359-0532 with questions about the investigation.
SLED did not respond to requests for information on the investigation. The Observer will continue to seek information from the agency through the S. C. Freedom of Information Act.