Kansas City, Mo. ? After destroyed evidence led to two murder cases being lost, Kansas City police have begun the second phase of an audit to inventory evidence from assault and homicide cases.

A police sergeant who mistakenly authorized the destruction of irreplaceable evidence in the two murder cases earlier this year did not follow proper procedures. He was transferred out of the homicide unit.

The errors prompted police officials to stop the destruction of all evidence in pending assault and homicide cases to conduct an internal audit. The first phase, which involved an inventory of evidence from about 300 cases, was completed a few weeks ago.

The inventory turned up other cases in which evidence had been destroyed, said Capt. Randy Hopkins, who declined to say how many cases were affected.

The property and evidence room routinely clears out evidence from old cases to make room for new evidence. Hopkins said most of the evidence probably was destroyed according to police guidelines.

One of the cases was a suicide later reclassified as a homicide.

The woman’s death initially was ruled a suicide in 2000 by the medical examiner. After the family asked for more investigation, a murder charge was eventually filed against the woman’s boyfriend, who is in custody in Leavenworth on a federal drug charge.

But police did not immediately reclassify the case as a homicide, so the victim’s bloody clothes and other nonessential evidence were destroyed three months after her death. The policy in place at the time required evidence from natural deaths and suicides to be kept for 30 days; Hopkins changed that to six months.

Hopkins said the loss of the evidence that was destroyed would not hurt the case because police recovered the gun and still had crime-scene reports and witnesses.

The department used to destroy or give back items to victims’ relatives after defendants’ appeals were exhausted.

Hopkins has increased the number of years that evidence from various types of assaults must be kept, to as long as eight years, and ordered all homicide evidence to be kept indefinitely.

“How do you know for sure what’s going to be relevant or not?” he said. “Sometimes we find out about a second unidentified suspect, and we need to hold the evidence for that co-defendant.”

The changes will create some headaches for those in the property and evidence room. Sgt. Randy Francis said the industry standard was to get rid of as much evidence as was being admitted. For example, if 5,000 new items arrive in a month, police would destroy or return to victims’ relatives the same number of items.

“It’s going to be harder to find stuff if we have more stuff,” he said. “When things pile up, it’s easier for things to get lost.”

Francis said space was not a concern now, though it could become one.

“Our warehouse is only so big,” he said. “We could eventually run out of space if we keep taking in more than we are putting out.”