Saturday, June 25, 2011

You're not going to believe this, but...

Dennis Olivier is a police officer with the Katy Independent School District Police Department (and don't even get me started on the absurdity of school districts having police departments) whose life was fairly uneventful until  earlier this month.

On June 8, 2011, Officer Olivier walked down the driveway to his pickup truck and noticed that a fishing tackle box loaded with an assortment of illegal drugs was missing. He could find no signs of forced entry and surmised he may have left his truck unlocked.

Why, you might ask, did Officer Olivier have an assortment of illegal drugs in his truck that would make a rock star proud? It seems that Officer Olivier is part of a K-9 unit (his partner, of course, being a dog) and the tackle box contained the samples used to train the dog.

The police report indicates the white tackle box with individual plastic bags of drugs was stolen, including: 
  • 6.5-grams of cocaine
  • 6.6-grams of heroin
  • 4.2-grams of methamphetamine
  • 6.4-grams of marijuana
  • An extra baggie of 30-grams of marijuana
  • 3 or 4 prescription pills

To add a further wrinkle to this sordid tale, Officer Olivier told investigators that the drugs were stolen sometime between June 4 (the date he took the drugs out of his patrol car and put them in his truck) and the day he discovered them missing.

The obvious question is why would he put the drugs in his truck in the first place? Wouldn't they have been safer in the trunk of his patrol car? Why did he leave the drugs in his truck for (at least) four days before checking to see they were still there?

Narcotics officers with another police department said the amount of drugs taken is consistent with K-9 training, but the drug-laden training kits are rarely stolen because they are usually carefully guarded and they don't look valuable.   They're also usually stored inside a police car, which is a much less likely target for burglars.

I have no idea whether or not Officer Olivier is telling the truth about the fate of the drugs. I find his story to be very amusing. I also find it very hard to believe.

These are the highly trained professionals that prosecutors parade in front of juries to testify as to how our clients consented to a search or that they smelled the "distinctive" odor of (fill-in-the-blank) drug. These are the men and women wearing badges and carrying guns that tell juries the dog really did signal that there were drugs in the car or that the defendant wasn't walking on the sidewalk when he was stopped.

There's something about Officer Olivier's story that just doesn't add up. I'm not going to speculate as to what happened to the drugs or as to whether or not the officer is telling a fib. I will say, however, that, at best, Officer Olivier acted negligently and, at worst, criminally.

Just think about the snickers you'd get if you tried to sell that story to a prosecutor.

H/T Stephen Dean

2 comments:

Nooch Big 50 said...

As someone I admire once said and now for the rest of the story..Dennis Olivier was diagnosed with Chrones disease 18 months ago and has had 12 surgury's and 1 year of remecaid treatment..his canine partner had surgury and had been retired and Dennis was returning his training drugs to the dept in his own veichle..he gave up bringing his police veichle home when he gave up his canine position..he had to return home to use the facility due to a Chrones attack with his stomach...Hurriedly he auto locked his veichle with his second set of keys without remembering the veichle had a safety mechanism which would unlock the auto if the keys were inside allowing someone to enter and steal his training drugs, phone and other items..I feel it is wrong to sully someones name and reputation without them being able to defend themselves...Dennis has always done his best to protect the children and citizens of Katy and that is the rest of this story..

COPHATER said...

Being an "educated" man of your caliber you should obviously know not to comment on something you know very little about. To say he has had an "uneventful life" until now just goes to show how ignorant you really are. He has recently been diagnosed with an incurable disease and has been struggling with this- he has been in the hospital with surgeries countless times- more than you can count on your hands. The most intelligent part of your blog is the following: "there's something about Olivier's story that just doesn't add up" You're right!! Because you dont know the FACTS!!!! Once and if you ever know all the facts then you can make an educated statement until then you will sound like an idiot.