ALBANY (AP) - More than 90 percent of the drug cases handled by the Valley Interagency Narcotics Team over the last decade may have been mishandled, an audit shows.

Albany Police Chief Joe Simon, the new head of the VALIANT board, said the figure is an estimate based on an initial report. He said it is unlikely that any officers will face criminal charges.

"What we are seeing is some pretty poor police work," Simon said.

VALIANT cases have been under review since fall 2003, when the supervisor discovered irregularities in the way property and evidence had been stored by the agency.

Officers from member agencies have spent months taking inventories and going over a decade of cases to determine which had problems. Most of them did, Simon said.

He said problems included:

- Evidence being destroyed when cases were still open.

- Evidence being destroyed without proper documentation.

- Files destroyed without following archiving rules.

- Evidence cards and reports that contained conflicting information.

- Cash that wasn't counted in front of a second person.

- Narcotics that weren't weighed and packaged properly.

- Evidence that was destroyed without the owner being notified.

Simon said the board wants some clarifications before making the audit public.

Meanwhile investigators are in the second phase of the audit.

"We will review absolutely every case file that has an issue, and based on that review, we will interview everybody that has been on the VALIANT team at one point or another over the last 10 years," Simon said.

If the person being interviewed claims to have destroyed a gun, for example, the investigators will interview other team members to see if they corroborate that story, and will go to where the gun was supposedly destroyed to seek verification.

Simon said that training procedures and a lack of supervision probably contributed to the problems.

Originally, the Albany, Lebanon, Sweet Home, Corvallis and Philomath police departments, the Oregon State Police and the Linn and Benton County sheriff's offices all contributed to Albany-based VALIANT. Officers from the agencies rotated terms.

Later some agencies pulled out because of budget problems, and the group could not afford clerical support or a property and evidence clerk.

Simon said that as outgoing officers trained new ones, problems multiplied. "You keep retraining bad habits, and then the bad habits become institutionalized," he said.

Since the evidence problems were uncovered, the remaining member agencies continue to cooperate when they investigate narcotics cases, but have been doing so with the team members working out of their own agencies' offices. Simon said the central office was closed June 30.

The future form the agency may take is undecided.