IAPE Evidence Blog

The Asso­ci­ated Press, The Jour­nal Gazette, Cox Media Group, ktvu.com
BYLINE: DOMINIC ADAMS
Link to Article

Fort Wayne, IN

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Capt. Shane Lee’s task is to make sure the Fort Wayne Police Department’s move from its Creighton Avenue head­quar­ters to its new home in the City-County Build­ing doesn’t jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases.

Lee is over­see­ing the move of the department’s evi­dence stor­age on the sixth floor of Creighton Avenue to its more mod­ern home on Main Street. The ren­o­va­tions to the City-County Build­ing cost more than $4.8 mil­lion and included remov­ing the esca­la­tor and beef­ing up build­ing security.

Every box, folder, pool cue, com­puter, stuffed ani­mal, tire, gun, drug and other item con­sid­ered evi­dence in a crim­i­nal case must never leave the sight of an offi­cer or some­one who works in the prop­erty room.

An offi­cer watches the movers pack the boxes, fol­lows them to the mov­ing truck, watches the evi­dence loaded onto the truck, locks the truck after it’s loaded, fol­lows the truck to the City-County Build­ing and then watches it get unloaded.

The process will be repeated until all 400,000 boxes of evi­dence are moved.

“For a suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of a crim­i­nal case, we have to show that the con­ti­nu­ity of evi­dence was strictly fol­lowed,” Lee said.

If an item is left unat­tended, a defense attor­ney could argue the evi­dence is no longer in the same state it was when police ini­tially seized it, Lee said.

That could mean a judge could bar the evi­dence from being used in a trial.

Movers recently started the month long process of mov­ing the police depart­ment head­quar­ters down­town — some­thing the depart­ment has been plan­ning for the past year and a half.

“We’ve made do with this build­ing for 15 years, but it was never made for pub­lic safety,” Chief Rusty York said.

Movers snaked carts in between rows of shelves stacked to the ceil­ing with boxes.

One box is labeled “death inves­ti­ga­tion,” while another con­tains items col­lected in a stab­bing inves­ti­ga­tion and a third box is labeled “sex­ual assault.”

As the carts are loaded with evi­dence, an offi­cer watches nearby and waits until the movers fill a cou­ple of carts.

The three snake back through the aisles, into the hall­way and onto the elevator.

Once in the lobby, the carts are pushed out the front door and across a makeshift bridge to the side door of the mov­ing truck, then loaded inside.

Another offi­cer watches from his unmarked police cruiser and read­ies to fol­low the truck to its new home at the City-County Building.

“It’ll be com­pa­ra­ble in size, but orga­nized dif­fer­ent,” Diane Spiller, the department’s evi­dence man­ager, said of the new loca­tion in the City-County Building.

Each piece of evi­dence is placed in a sealed bag, labeled with a bar­code and put in a box that also is labeled with a barcode.

Spiller said the evi­dence in the new room will be stored on move­able shelves.

Offi­cials had to make room to store evi­dence for a long period — Spiller said, for exam­ple, that evi­dence in child molest­ing cases must be kept until the child turns 31 years old.

There are dif­fer­ent areas of stor­age for DNA, firearms, nar­cotics and homi­cide evi­dence, Lee said.

“They have been dili­gently work­ing for a num­ber of months to pre­pare for the move,” he said of the evi­dence room workers.

Spiller said large tools that have been seized are dif­fi­cult to move because often they can’t be stored in a tra­di­tional box.

Begin­ning this week, offi­cers with crim­i­nal evi­dence or other prop­erty have been tak­ing it to the City-County Building.

___

Infor­ma­tion from: The Jour­nal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net

Copy­right The Asso­ci­ated Press

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Patch.org, Napa­P­atch, napa.patch.com
BYLINE: Mar­sha Dor­gan
Link to Article

Napa, CA

Inside the climate-controlled room where police store crime-scene evi­dence and items of value found around town.

Com­mu­nity ser­vice offi­cer Cindy Hood runs the prop­erty and evi­dence room at the City of Napa Police Depart­ment. Credit Mar­sha Dorgan

Walk into Cindy Hood’s office and you’re likely to detect a faint odor of mar­i­juana. A few steps from her desk is an arse­nal of weapons: every­thing from an assault weapon to a hand­gun to a sword and even some deac­ti­vated hand grenades.

At one time, Hood had to work her way past a spa, a kitchen stove and a mas­sive tele­vi­sion that were tak­ing up valu­able space around her desk.

Hood, who has been with the Napa Police Depart­ment for more than 20 years, is the com­mu­nity ser­vice offi­cer in charge of the prop­erty and evi­dence room in the base­ment of the department’s offices on First Street in down­town Napa.

The climate-controlled room is crammed with boxes and bags of evi­dence recov­ered by inves­ti­ga­tors from a crime scene. This is also the stor­age spot for items of value found by police offi­cers or the public.

Drugs des­tined to be burned, guns restored to own­ers or melted down

Mar­i­juana, heroin and metham­phet­a­mine, with drug para­pher­na­lia such as pipes, syringes and scales, are kept under lock and key until the crim­i­nal cases are con­cluded and the dis­trict attor­ney releases the evidence.

Then the drugs are incinerated.

“I can’t for obvi­ous rea­sons release the loca­tion,” Hood said. “Offi­cers have to stand there and make sure all of the drugs com­pletely burn.”

Firearms no longer needed as evi­dence are sent to a Bay Area foundry where they are melted down for sewer pipe.

“Most of the stolen guns are retrieved: Own­ers usu­ally have the ser­ial num­ber, which proves own­er­ship,” Hood said.

Com­put­ers line two walls in the evi­dence room. If a com­puter is con­fis­cated in a search war­rant or part of a crim­i­nal case, its owner may down­load cer­tain items with per­mis­sion from the dis­trict attorney’s office, Hood said.

A cor­ner of the room is set aside for evi­dence col­lected from sex­ual assault crimes.

“We have to give them a larger area because the evi­dence can be bed­ding, pil­lows and other bulky items,” Hood said, point­ing to a child car seat.

Bikes and own­ers are hard to reunite

Even bulkier are the many stolen and con­fis­cated bicy­cles stored in a shed behind the police department.

“Most of them are found bikes. Some are evi­dence and oth­ers are being held for safe­keep­ing, such as if a per­son is arrested while rid­ing a bike, we keep it here for 90 days,” Hood said.

Found bikes are the hard­est items to reunite with their own­ers, said retired Napa police offi­cer Bob Van Wormer, Hood’s one helper in the prop­erty and evi­dence room.

“We can ID the owner through the bike’s ser­ial num­ber, how­ever, many peo­ple don’t keep track of that kind of stuff. Only about 10 per­cent of the bikes are recov­ered by the own­ers,” Van Wormer said.

If a per­son turns in a found bike, and police can­not find the owner, the finder may claim the bike, he said. After 90 days, unclaimed bikes are auc­tioned off.

Body flu­ids kept in con­trolled cold storage

Sev­eral freez­ers and refrig­er­a­tors lin­ing a back wall con­tain sealed plas­tic bags of blood and urine.

“The blood and urine sam­ples are kept in dif­fer­ent freez­ers,” Hood said. “We have to be extremely care­ful to not cross-contaminate the evi­dence while han­dling it.”

If the tem­per­a­ture fluc­tu­ates in a refrig­er­a­tor or freezer, “an alarm goes off to let us know,” Hood said.

The spec­i­mens are sent to the state Depart­ment of Jus­tice where they are processed and tested, she said.

Most evi­dence is kept until the crim­i­nal case is con­cluded and the appeal process is fin­ished. How­ever, homi­cide evi­dence must be kept for 99 years, Hood added.

Evi­dence is released only by order from the Napa County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office or the courts.

Dis­card­ing (purg­ing) found prop­erty is an ongo­ing process, said Shirley Perkins of Napa Police Admin­is­tra­tive Services.

“We do every­thing pos­si­ble to find the own­ers. If we know who they are, we write them let­ters,” she said. “We have even returned prop­erty to peo­ple who are incarcerated.”

Hood couldn’t said she recall any par­tic­u­lar “weird” items she has encoun­tered through­out the years.

“I was going through a sack once and a plas­tic skele­ton popped up. It really star­tled me,” she said.

A clutch of deac­ti­vated hand grenades in the Napa Police Depart­ment prop­erty and evi­dence room. Credit Mar­sha Dor­gan
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Retired Napa police offi­cer Bob Van Wormer among the many bicy­cles in police stor­age. Credit Mar­sha Dor­gan
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Palm Beach Post, palmbeachpost.com
BYLINE: Eliot Klein­berg, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Link to Article

Boyn­ton Beach, FL

Evi­dence Detec­tive Daniel Cline looks for an item inside the evi­dence room at the Boyn­ton Beach Police Depart­ment Fri­day Feb. 3, 2012. Richard Graulich/Palm Beach Post

BOYNTON BEACH — A recent audit of the police evi­dence unit was unable to account for 40 items, chief Matt Imm­ler said last week .

By Thurs­day, Imm­ler said, fewer than 11 items remained unac­counted for.

He said none were crit­i­cal to open cases, where a defense lawyer might employ a “chain of cus­tody” challenge.

Imm­ler said this is the first such inci­dent since he became chief in 2005.

He said the items never were miss­ing; they just couldn’t be found in an evi­dence unit so crowded that bins are stacked on top of each other or slip behind each other on shelves.

“We are com­pletely out of space,” Imm­ler said. “That’s even with destroy­ing as much evi­dence and prop­erty as we’re allowed to every month. The inflow of prop­erty over­takes the outflow. ”

Immler’s solu­tion is one he’s pushed for years: a new police station.

The depart­ment, one of Palm Beach County’s largest, oper­ates in a wing of city hall that totals 18,000 square feet. A 2009 study said it needs 60,000 to 80,000.

All the miss­ing items, Imm­ler said, were from closed cases or cases police likely will not pur­sue. One item dated to 1983, accord­ing to memos obtained by the Post.

While some space for evi­dence recently opened up in a garage and in parts of city hall, it’s either not cli­mate con­trolled or not secure, Imm­ler said.

Amid the city’s con­tin­u­ing bud­get woes, Imm­ler had laid off two civil­ian evi­dence cus­to­di­ans, and employed offi­cers he’d taken off the street for rea­sons such as injury or discipline.

“That’s when we began to notice there was a prob­lem,” Imm­ler said.

He said he added six inspec­tions and ran­dom monthly checks.

By then, Imm­ler had reas­signed two road offi­cers to the evi­dence unit; they helped in the Decem­ber audit that turned up the discrepancy.

Imm­ler has com­pen­sated by tak­ing two other offi­cers off inter­a­gency task forces, one on gangs and one on drugs.

“I didn’t want to do that, because I believe in those task forces,” Imm­ler said. “But at this point, I don’t have any choice.”

Evi­dence Detec­tive Daniel Cline looks for an item inside the evi­dence room at the Boyn­ton Beach Police Depart­ment Fri­day Feb. 3, 2012. Richard Graulich/Palm Beach Post
 
 
 
 
 

Evi­dence Detec­tive Daniel Cline stands next to shelves stocked to the ceil­ing inside the evi­dence room at the Boyn­ton Beach Police Depart­ment Fri­day Feb. 3, 2012. Richard Graulich/Palm Beach Post
 
 
 

Items are stacked inside the evi­dence room at the Boyn­ton Beach Police Depart­ment Fri­day Feb. 3, 2012. Richard Graulich/Palm Beach Post
 
 
 
 
 
 

Evi­dence con­tain­ers are stacked inside the evi­dence room at the Boyn­ton Beach Police Depart­ment Fri­day Feb. 3, 2012. Richard Graulich/Palm Beach Post
 
 
 
 
 

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org