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Someone has slipped more than 50 rounds to draw air lights inside the lock range at the Oregon State Police Crime Laboratory last summer.

But an investigator of the State Police has given up trying to find the culprit or culprits.

Laxa security at the Metro Criminal Burning range in Clarckamas County – used to test the weapons and run ballistic analyzes – offered a little to continue, he said.

The laboratory had no system to track who used the range and when. One of a handful of keys to the range hanging by a cloth that anyone could grab. A manager lost his key as he analyzed the damage.

The state police stopped the internal investigation “due to the lack of systems in force to monitor and/or document the time, date, individual use, the actions performed in the combustion interval or evidence indicating how and when the damages were caused,” according to the thin results, issued in Oregon/Oregonlive in response to a public record.

Although the investigation does not say it, the report indicates a probably inside job or a perpetrator who at least knew enough about the laboratory operations to have access. The investigator also notes that he could not prove that the damages were intended.

Now, almost eight months after the apparent vandalism, the state police move to add a card system to follow who comes in and exits the range, said Captain Kyle Kennedy, an agency spokesman. The agency is in the procurement process, he said.

Poor security drops far below the best basic practices, specialists said.

In Portland, for example, anyone who uses the interior shooting range in the Portland Police basement Bureau of the Central Precquer must connect and exit on a paper tracking system. Also, the office follows that enters the range using key phobs. During the interval of his training division, the officers schedule times to use it and then have to connect and go through a paper journal.

“It is almost an implicit standard of the industry that you would keep track of who enters the range and engages in a living fire, especially if it is for forensic purposes,” said Aaron Forum, a Fire Expert in Colorado and former special weapons armies. He had a private range of interior weapons and helps design them.

– Who shot the ray?

State police scientists, Leland Samuelson and Shawn Malikowski discovered the damage on June 13, when they entered the range to test the fire in the water tank and turn on the lights.

They noticed that someone shot several light bodies near the target range of the range, with shattered glass and plastic scraps on the floor.

Also, the Target stands were “shot shot all over the floor,” Samuelson told an investigator and noted “it was clear that it was fresh and none of us was in the range all week.”

When the two returned to the laboratory office, they asked, “Hey, who shot the ray?” Dan Alessio, an analyst of firearms, who works at the laboratory.

The investigation found more than 50 bullets on an unspecified number of light bodies and ceiling defects, as well as bullets at PVC pipeline stands.

There are no security rooms in the shooting range or focused on the entrance. The range is in a detached structure separately from the main laboratory building.

The workers would access the range, leaving the main building through a south corridor or leaving the main building through a vehicle bay. The security cameras cover those areas, but the investigation report said that it is “unlikely” any of these rooms would have provided information that could have helped the investigation.

Laboratory employees use the range to pull the weapons to check if it works properly and to produce drawn bullets and cartridges for comparison for forensic analysis with the crime scene samples.

According to the Agency’s rules, there must be two people at any time, the shooter and a spotter.

The supervisor lost the key

Only a handful of employees had the range of the range, but others had access through a common key, according to the investigation.

John Dyer, a criminal manager and supervisor of the Laboratory Fire and Chemistry Section, said he has a key, four firearms have a key and a key hanging by a magnetic hook in the office of the firearms section for two laboratory technicians. Laboratory technologies regularly enter the laboratory to check if the fire extinguisher and eye wash works.

Sally How, one of the laboratory technologies, told the investigator that the shared key is accessible “almost anyone”.

When Dyer was interviewed in November, he said he replaced his own range.

“In the process of investigating this particular incident, I put my key somewhere. … I could not locate my key, “he said, according to his interview transcript.

Once he learned of damages, Dyer said he documented him with photos and presented a report to the laboratory directory, Elizabeth Flannery.

“Then I waited because it was told that there will be an investigation by the staff,” he said.

Dyer told the investigator that the state police should approach the “lack of responsibility” regarding the use of the range and has suggested an electronic lock to record income and departures, not just a written journal.

Lack of security rooms

Brian Robertson, a criminal manager at The Lab who supervises the latent printed analysis, interviewed only seven people for the range or regular access.

He said that the mission of metal keys was not documented in any database of the state police, but found out that who received the keys through interviews.

Robertson’s investigation began in early November five months after shooting. It seems that an initial investigation was made by the laboratory director and then Robertson did a tracking investigation, Kennedy said.

Robertson’s report, delivered in January, said he reviewed the key records for card access to the firearms laboratory, which is hosted in the same building as the range, between 5:00 and 17:00, on June 3 until June 13.

He said he had not found anything out of the ordinary in the workers’ movement, but did not interview all who entered and left the firearm laboratory in those hours.

Samuelson, one of the forensic scientists who discovered the damages, told Robertson that he asked him “if someone came at the weekend or in hours and used the range.”

He asked the investigator to verify the security chamber materials to determine if someone was in the building over the weekend or after hours and could have entered the interval.

Robertson said he had not interviewed more people because he did not find anything to indicate that anyone without an attributed key could have entered.

Samuelson also told Robertson that he believes that the staff of the State Administrative Services Department could have keys, but he is not sure.

Kennedy, the spokesman for the state police, said the Agency has not found any information to indicate that any employees of the administrative services have access to the shooting range.

Robertson concluded in a report he signed on January 2 that he could not determine if someone intentionally caused the damage.

“He believes that there is no sufficient evidence to go further with further investigations,” he wrote.

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