A man has been arrested again on drug charges after being released earlier this year when it was revealed that hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, weapons and thousands of drug samples disappeared from a Massachusetts police department's evidence room.
David Arrufat was arrested on Oct. 9 in Quincy after he was allegedly found passed out inside a car and in possession of heroin, according to the Norfolk district attorney's office.
Arrufat was previously arrested and pled to a heroin charge in April this year and received a year's sentence, which was then vacated by September after an audit shed light on the state of the Braintree Police Department's evidence room.
He is the first suspect in Norfolk County to be re-arrest on a new drug charge since being released.
He has since pled not guilty to the Oct. 9 charges, and was ordered to be held on $500 cash bail. The D.A. asked Quincy District Court Judge Marc Coven to include ordering Arrufat to stay drug and alcohol free with random testing as part of his condition for release, but was denied.
Arrufat is due back in court on Dec. 8 for a pre-trial conference. It's unclear whether he has an attorney.
An audit released last month found that 4,709 pieces of narcotics evidence was missing, more than 60 guns were unaccounted for and more than $400,000 in cash seized from criminals was also missing.
necn learned that the Braintree police officer in charge of the evidence room, Susan Zopatti, committed suicide in May shortly after learning about the evidence room investigation.
This is not the first scandal Massachusetts has seen regarding tainted evidence. Thousands of drug cases were dismissed starting in 2011 after a former state chemist, Annie Dookhan, tampered with drug samples and falsified results.
