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Law and Order: Police Evidence Rooms Learn from Warehouse Tech

Law and Order: Police Evidence Rooms Learn from Warehouse Tech

Police work is primarily focused outside the police station, in the community, and that’s as it should be. There’s a satisfaction, even a glamor, to being out on the streets keeping the community safe and secure. This outward focus sometimes means that the station itself – the place of dull paperwork and desk jobs – suffers from a lack of public attention and administrative funding. Support facilities like evidence storage and property rooms may lag behind other state-of-the-art policing technology, and that can mean the efforts of front-line police work may be rendered fruitless when a case goes to trial with missing or inadmissible evidence.

Public safety expert Kathy Marks, writing in Law and Order Magazine, interviewed current and former police officers regarding the need for better evidence storage and property room technology. A good inventory system was their Number One recommendation, a system that could identify and track every item connected to a case. Missing evidence or a broken chain of custody will derail an otherwise strong criminal case.

Just as important, the interviewees reported, was a system that could schedule the return, destruction, or retention of each item. Even when a police department has a carefully maintained intake inventory system, a backlog of outdated, unneeded evidence and property take up valuable – and scarce – storage space. Overcrowded storage inevitably leads to the damage or loss of some items, increasing the challenge of making a case.

The outward-facing side of police work has for some time employed technology to make the job safer and more efficient, with everything from smart duty lockers to mobile laptop and tablet charging stations. Now the administrative side is getting its own tech applications, particularly for managing the inventories of the evidence and property rooms. Commonly used in warehousing and logistics, bar coding and RFID technologies are proving especially useful in public safety settings. Easy-to-generate bar codes identify individual items, and RFID tags provide locational tracking information as well as identification. Coupled with space-saving high-density mobile shelving for property, and secure transfer and storage lockers for evidence, these automated inventory systems maintain a clear chain of custody and keep the storage footprint manageable.

Written policies and procedures are also an important part of a well-run evidence and property rooms. Marks’ interview subjects emphasized that managing property and evidence isn’t for everyone. People with a warehouse inventory background or military quartermaster experience tend to excel in the management of police evidence and property rooms.

Good management of property and evidence storage plays a vital role in law and order. With the right combination of personnel and technology, this undervalued sector of public safety can be a big contributor to the criminal justice system.

 

Photo © Photographee.eu / AdobeStock

The Law of Unintended Consequences: Gun Storage

The Law of Unintended Consequences: Gun Storage

The Supreme Court recently upheld a federal law requiring the confiscation of guns in cases of domestic violence. This ruling created a perplexing question for police departments across the country: Where to store all the confiscated guns?

In some states – California, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, for example – guns are confiscated at the time of arrest, long before a case ever goes to court. They must all be held in the property room pending the outcome of the trial. Under North Carolina law, seized guns are only destroyed if they are non-working or missing a serial number; they may be sold, but selling them has proven to be an unpopular option, and the accumulation of unclaimed guns has only added to the burden of property room supervisors.

Unlike other forms of property held by the police, confiscated guns represent a significant risk to the public and to law enforcement if not stored with complete security. Even if a property room has the space, just adding shelves and bins is not an adequate storage solution. As storage consultants know, guns must be stored in specialized secure lockers in order to keep them out of the hands of unauthorized individuals.

Good intentions sometimes have unintended consequences, and police departments are learning what those consequences mean for their property rooms. If you’re managing a property room, talk to a storage pro about additional gun lockers.

 

Photo © aijohn784/Fotolia.com

What the FBI Says About Evidence Storage and Cold Cases

What the FBI Says About Evidence Storage and Cold Cases

The FBI’s CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) helps local law enforcement identify suspects by comparing DNA evidence to DNA profiles in the CODIS database. It is a powerful tool for clearing cold cases, but now defense attorneys routinely look for a break in the chain of evidence, hoping to rule out a DNA match linking their client to a crime. If a property room cannot prove that DNA was properly stored and properly secured, the evidence becomes suspect and a judge may summarily dismiss the case.

Added to chain-of-evidence issues are changes in state laws requiring retention of DNA evidence for longer periods, as well as increases in the length of the statute of limitations. Writing in the FBI’s “Focus On Forensics,” William Kiley discusses how CODIS and statutory changes place great pressure on property rooms where space, security, and environmental controls are a challenge. It’s a complex problem, and the solutions aren’t always readily apparent. Luckily, there are high-density storage systems with security controls designed specifically for long-term evidence storage. Even more important, the experts at National Office Systems can help explain the options.

Photo © igor – Fotolia

 

When A Good Storage System Can Be A Matter Life And Death

When A Good Storage System Can Be A Matter Life And Death

When police investigators examine a crime, they collect bits and pieces of evidence by the dozen, everything from DNA evidence to the proverbial “smoking gun.” Every item has to be catalogued and stored for the use of detectives and courts, and without a well-organized high density storage system, key evidence can go missing.  In cases involving capital murder, missing evidence can send the wrong person to death row, or set a murderer free. Evidence expert John Vasquez discusses several such cases in a story for The Austin Chronicle, including that of accused murderer Hank Skinner and the blood-stained jacket that could exonerate him, or send him to death row – a jacket which has disappeared from the police evidence room: http://bit.ly/1mAK3h0

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