Robinson is one of 15 people who applied to become the next police chief in Butler County’s Fairfield Twp. Robinson worked for Monroe’s police department from 1994 to 2013 as a patrol commander and assistant police chief and was a Lemon Twp. police officer prior to that.
The property room in Robinson’s Riverside department became a place where guns, cash and drugs were unaccounted for by the time Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office officials this year declared it was “not in operational capacity,” according to an internal memo obtained by the Journal-News under Ohio’s public records law.
Problems inside the room included a box of guns left in the open, unsecured rape kits stacked in a corner, more than 3,000 pages of paperwork left unorganized, and evidence returned from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation left in a box instead of properly logged.
Outside the room, evidence was stored without identification.
The problems caused the dismissal of an impaired driving case and delayed a burglary investigation, according to the document.
Fairfield Twp. administrator Julie Vonderhaar said the police chief position “is key” as this person will shape the department in the years to come.
“It’s important to the future growth of the police department,” she told the Journal-News. She declined to comment on the incident involving Robinson’s current department.
Fairfield Twp. Board of Trustees President Susan Berding also declined to comment, saying, “I feel it would be inappropriate for me to comment.”
Robinson said the employee in charge of the property room resigned after being placed on administrative leave in December, and a new employee was hired and is being trained with guidance from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.
But the police chief acknowledged problems remain from the room’s years of disarray.
“Still, right now we’re trying to alleviate the property room of the property that was supposed to be gone, but was not,” he said. “There was literally thousands of pieces of property in various locations. I knew there was an issue.”
The six-page memo sent in January from Maj. Rhett Close, who no longer works at the department, to Robinson details the issues with property room management dating back to 2009.
Among the problems were 19 guns unaccounted for in 2016, and a firearm involved in a cold case murder along with evidence, including biological evidence, left in an exterior shed.
Robinson, who became chief in Riverside in 2013, said property rooms should be audited every year. Some of the property in the room that should have been disposed of dated back to before Robinson became chief, he said.
Robinson said he is changing the department policy to ensure this type of problem does not occur in the future.
“The big three — guns, drugs and currency — will be done (audited) quarterly,” he said. “And a full audit of the property room will be done yearly.”
Riverside Councilman Steve Fullenkamp, who previously has been critical of Robinson, said he believes police administration should be held accountable for the condition of the room.
“Sometimes the lowest person on the totem pole is the one who gets held responsible, but then again I feel there is a responsibility of management to make sure the job gets done properly,” Fullenkamp said. “I believe that supervisors should be held responsible for the actions of the people they are supervising.”
Staff writer Michael D. Pitman contributed to this report.
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