IAPE Evidence Blog

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BYLINE: Jean Reid Nor­man
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Boul­der City, NV

A pipe that burst dur­ing ren­o­va­tion of the Boul­der City Police Sta­tion flooded the evi­dence room but did not dam­age any evi­dence, police say.

The pipe, part of the fire sup­pres­sion sys­tem, broke Aug. 25 in an upstairs area that is being turned into new offices for the police chief, deputy chief and an assis­tant as well as a con­fer­ence room, Shane Cun­ning­ham of the Pub­lic Works Depart­ment said. Water flooded the evi­dence room in the base­ment below those offices and dam­aged the cur­rent office of Deputy Chief John Chase, which is also in the base­ment below the work area, Cun­ning­ham said.

The water filled the floor of the evi­dence room to about an inch in depth, Detec­tive Sgt. Vince Albow­icz said. Luck­ily for the depart­ment, all of the boxes of evi­dence were on metal shelv­ing well off the floor, and only a few card­board boxes sus­tained damage.

None of the evi­dence inside the boxes was harmed, Albow­icz said.

“The major­ity of the dam­age was not to the evi­dence or the evi­dence items. It was to the room itself,” he said. “We were very for­tu­nate. No evi­dence was lost.”

All of the evi­dence in dam­aged boxes was repacked into new card­board boxes, and all of the evi­dence was moved to a new, larger room, where it will stay, Albow­icz said.

As it turns out, he said, the detec­tive bureau had just moved into its new offices upstairs and its old offices in the base­ment were available.

“It will afford us some growth in the future,” he said.

In the mean­time, con­trac­tor Hardy Con­struc­tion Inc. is fix­ing the dam­age the bro­ken pipe caused, Cun­ning­ham said. All of the walls and drop ceil­ings are being replaced, and Hardy Con­struc­tion will pay for the time city employ­ees spent reor­ga­niz­ing the evi­dence and mov­ing it to its new home.

The good news, Cun­ning­ham said, is that Hardy brought in extra work­ers to han­dle the repairs, and the remod­el­ing job is still on track to be com­pleted by Sept. 25.

The city plans to host the next Cham­ber of Com­merce mixer at the ren­o­vated sta­tion at 6 p.m. Oct. 14 to allow the pub­lic to see results of the $750,000 project.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
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