The Harris County Precinct 4 constable’s office has fired a deputy on the heels of allegations that property from its evidence room was destroyed, Constable Mark Herman said Sept. 6.

In January, Deputy Chris Hess was assigned to clean up the evidence room, which was getting too “congested,” Herman said. Hess ended up destroying nearly 8,000 items. Of those items, 861 were traced back to 470 open cases. Of those 470 cases, 183 have been determined to be drug-related cases.

"He and a group of others were told to research cases and find out what we could get rid of and properly dispose of,” he said. “No one told him to violate the law. This guy knows his job and he neglected it, and I fired him for it.”

On Sept. 6 Herman called a press conference to discuss the allegations being investigated by Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson.

“We had property destruction, and there ended up being 861 items of property from open cases,” he said. “Some of these cases were to be adjudicated and filed in court, and the district attorney's office ended up dismissing some of those cases.”

In March, after its own internal investigation, the constable’s office made a call to the district attorney to investigate.

"I think this will end up being a case where a rogue employee—whether it’s intentionally, negligently or accidentally—I don’t know …” Herman said. “I’ll leave that up to the [district attorney’s] office. Whatever it is, the [district attorney’s] office will find out.”

Herman said he and his office welcome the investigation by the district attorney’s office.

“I never have a problem sleeping—ever,” Herman said. “I’ve found myself in the last week or so at two in the morning thinking ‘What else could I have done?’ We’ve learned a good valuable lesson from it, and we’re going to be better for it.”