A Career Change May Be In His Future
A MONTGOMERY COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, man who was a Whitemarsh police officer also served with the Plymouth Community Ambulance squad until he was arrested and charged with theft of drugs Tuesday.
The Montgomery News is reporting:
The charges against Dominic Venezia, who was also a Whitemarsh Township police officer until his arrest, stem from a report made May 5 by the chief of operations of Plymouth Ambulance that morphine was missing from the company, the DA said in a press release.
The morphine was kept in a medical supply cabinet in the locked office of the chief of operations, and investigators learned that a limited number of people associated with the ambulance company had access to the office with their assigned key cards. A report was compiled to determine who had access to the office and showed that Venezia had accessed the office and supply cabinet on multiple occasions.
The investigators detemined that Venezia, who was an assistant chief in the rescue squad, had taken the ampules of morphine and arrested him at the police station where he admitted that he has a "drug problem."
Plymouth Community Ambulance website photo
The Times Herald tells:
The ambulance company’s Chief of Operations Thomas Trojansky became suspicious after finding items out of place in the supply cabinet behind his desk, and he conducted an immediate inventory. Trojansky knew the cabinet contained 55 morphine Carpuject cartrides prior to May 5, but when he counted them that day there were 24 missing.
Venezia had called Trojansky two weeks earlier asking about "all of the morphine cartridges" in the cabinet, and the operations chief explained that the drugs stored there were for emergency use in the event of a disaster, according to the criminal complaint.
A day later, Plymouth police detectives placed a hidden camera inside Trojansky’s office to find out who was taking the narcotics. They discovered Venezia had come into the office with a key-card and that he allegedly accessed the storage cabinet.
He was arraigned yesterday (Wednesday) and released after posting a $5,000 bond. His hearing has been scheduled for next week and he has been removed from the rolls as a police officer.
The Plymouth Community Ambulance Service is a combination paid/volunteer organization and it was not disclosed if Venezia was a volunteer or part-time employee of the squad.
Read the complete story in the Times Herald HERE.
Plymouth Community Ambulance Association WEBSITE.
* * * * * * *
Also on FireGeezer…
- Missing Drugs in Two F&R Stations – April 29, 2012
