IAPE Evidence Blog

The La Crosse Tri­bune, lacrossetribune.com
BYLINE: ANNE JUNGEN ajungen@lacrossetribune.com
Link to Article

La Crosse, WI

Shelves filled with evi­dence in the evi­dence room at the La Crosse Police Dept. Erik Daily

Highly secure police prop­erty rooms hold evidence

Proof of guilt can be found here, tucked inside manila envelopes stacked floor to ceil­ing. Cash hijacked from a bank. A DNA-laden rock used to smash a win­dow dur­ing a bur­glary. Drugs seized from an apart­ment after an over­dose. The La Crosse Police Department’s prop­erty area is the offi­cial repos­i­tory of evi­dence –method­i­cally orga­nized and pre­served — gleaned from crime scenes, vic­tims and suspects. 

The 1,000-square-foot area on the first floor is mon­i­tored by two secu­rity cam­eras and sealed to all but three peo­ple: a sergeant, a lieu­tenant and a prop­erty clerk. Even the chief is pro­hib­ited from enter­ing with­out supervision.

There’s no rea­son for oth­ers to be in here, police Sgt. Randy Rank said.

“You want to keep who has access to a min­i­mum,” he said.

Within the prop­erty area, three rooms house more than 20,000 pieces of evi­dence, most sealed inside large envelopes filed in boxes and plas­tic tubs on six mov­able shelv­ing units. This year alone has pro­duced about 3,100 items from 1,200 cases.

Offi­cers and inves­ti­ga­tors are respon­si­ble for col­lect­ing, pack­ag­ing and label­ing evi­dence before it’s turned over to prop­erty clerk Kris­tine Gasch, who elec­tron­i­cally logs and labels the item by case number.

The cache includes DNA sam­ples, drugs, soda cans, cloth­ing, knives, metal bats, sur­veil­lance videos and car parts. An arson case yielded a charred piece of roof.

“You name it, we got it,” Rank said.

Three freez­ers hold dried and pre­served bio­log­i­cal evi­dence. Advances in foren­sic tech­nol­ogy have increased the vol­ume of DNA sam­ples in the past sev­eral years, Rank said, and the depart­ment becomes respon­si­ble after pro­cess­ing at the state Crime Lab­o­ra­tory in Madison.

Con­fis­cated drugs are stored in two old jail cells, in a small room with a fan to con­trol odor and mold growth. Guns are kept in locked cab­i­nets; cash also is stored separately.

Vehi­cles and other larger items are stored under the same secu­rity mea­sures in a pole barn on city-owned prop­erty. The site also holds evi­dence from cold or older cases, includ­ing the 1954 inves­ti­ga­tion into Eve­lyn Hartley’s disappearance.

Police annu­ally col­lect 5,000 to 6,000 pieces of evi­dence. Prop­erly main­tain­ing and orga­niz­ing each piece is cru­cial to build­ing a crim­i­nal case, La Crosse County Dis­trict Attor­ney Tim Gru­enke said.

“It’s even more impor­tant they main­tain the evi­dence in a way that allows it to be ana­lyzed if nec­es­sary for fin­ger­prints, DNA, or other sci­en­tific test­ing, for trial and some­times even after a con­vic­tion to sup­port an appeal,” Gru­enke said.

Audits are done annu­ally on a small, ran­dom selec­tion of guns, drug items, cash and other items, and the rooms can be inspected unan­nounced by the chief. No audit has raised a prob­lem, accord­ing to police and Gruenke.

The depart­ment must reg­u­larly purge evi­dence to make room for new items. Evi­dence from unsolved homi­cide cases, how­ever, must be saved indefinitely.

Mis­de­meanor case evi­dence can be purged 18 months after con­vic­tion. Felony case evi­dence can be dis­posed of 18 months after con­vic­tion as well with per­mis­sion from the prosecutor.

The depart­ment also noti­fies defen­dants that prop­erty will be destroyed if they do not object.

DNA evi­dence is thrown out, while drugs are burned in an incin­er­a­tor. Guns are destroyed at the state Crime Lab, offi­cials said.

“We don’t want them end­ing up back on the street,” Rank said.

The evi­dence room at the La Crosse Police Dept.

Photo Credit: Erik Daily

Grow­ing evidence

La Crosse police col­lect thou­sands of pieces of evi­dence each year in mis­de­meanor and felony cases.

Year: Items collected

2006: 6,215

2007: 5,897

2008: 5,441

2009: 6,147

WHAT IS EVIDENCE?

Any tan­gi­ble item police can gather from a crime scene or a vic­tim can be con­sid­ered case evi­dence. Those items can include any­thing from DNA and vehi­cles to dig­i­tal records from secu­rity cam­eras and squad cars.

Source: La Crosse Police Department

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

THE PRESS-GAZETTE, greenbaypressgazette.com
BYLINE: DOUG SCHNEIDER • dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com

Green Bay, WI

Shelves are crammed full of evi­dence inside evi­dence stor­age room B on Thurs­day at the Green Bay Police Depart­ment. The room was orig­i­nally the roll-call room. (Evan Siegle/Press-Gazette)

When the room used to store evi­dence at the Green Bay Police Depart­ment was full, the roll-call room became an evi­dence room.

Roll-call moved to the for­mer lunch­room. The new lunch­room is in a for­mer lobby, one flight up.

The physical-training room remains the physical-training room — but maybe not for long.

The rea­son behind all the change is a moun­tain of crim­i­nal evi­dence that is tax­ing the department’s abil­ity to store it, and threat­en­ing to out­grow its space in the base­ment of the 41-year-old build­ing on South Adams Street. A num­ber of fac­tors are dri­ving the growth, police say, includ­ing the require­ment that DNA evi­dence be retained as long as the defen­dant is eli­gi­ble to appeal his or her sentence.

“We’re not say­ing this is a cri­sis … but if things don’t change within a year or two it’s going to be one,” said Greg Urban, inves­ti­ga­tions divi­sion commander.

Police offi­cials say a new evi­dence build­ing, which they esti­mate would cost up to $560,000, would solve the prob­lem. But they acknowl­edge that Green Bay tax­pay­ers don’t have the means to pay for one. The city has asked for fed­eral help to fund the project; Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Milwaukee, has requested $560,000 as part of the fis­cal 2011 fed­eral budget.

Phys­i­cal evi­dence is one of the pil­lars on which pros­e­cu­tors build cases against criminals.

But evi­dence must be col­lected, cat­a­logued and stored. And the lat­ter takes room, and lots of it, in a city of 100,000 res­i­dents. Even in low-level cases, most evi­dence must be retained for at least two years after a case has ended, said Mike Gret­zinger, a Green Bay police evi­dence custodian.

Mak­ing do

In more seri­ous cases, such as crimes of vio­lence, it’s often con­sid­er­ably longer. A gun col­lected as evi­dence must be retained until cops get a court order allow­ing it to be destroyed. DNA evi­dence, because of recent change in the law, must be retained vir­tu­ally for­ever, police say.

In the 12 months ended July 31, 2009. Green Bay’s 18 detec­tives han­dled 2,387 cases. Each gen­er­ates evi­dence that must be seg­re­gated by case num­ber. Urban said the depart­ment col­lected, cat­a­logued and stored 8,869 pieces of it last year.

Evi­dence, usu­ally in boxes, lines shelves along the walls of locked rooms in the building’s base­ment. A gum­ball machine, plas­tic totes teem­ing with pre­scrip­tion bot­tles, and other odd– or over-sized items rest on the linoleum nearby. Col­lec­tions of street drugs, orga­nized in boxes tagged with stick­ers and marked with hand­writ­ten case num­bers, sit behind a sec­ond locked door in a humidity-controlled con­nect­ing room.

The depart­ment ded­i­cated extra space early in the decade by rear­rang­ing how items were stored, Gret­zinger said. In late 2006 and early 2007, they took over the for­mer roll-call room and installed mov­able cab­i­nets sim­i­lar to those used in med­ical offices for storage.

Less than four years later, those cab­i­nets are nearly full.

Some­times, Gret­zinger said, “You need roller skates to get from one (end of the room) to the other.”

The options

The crowded con­di­tions have not inter­fered with detec­tives’ abil­ity to inves­ti­gate cases, Urban said. But he acknowl­edged that the sit­u­a­tion could make it more dif­fi­cult for an inves­ti­ga­tor to get his hands on key evi­dence as quickly as needed.

Expand­ing into the work­out room, he said, would affect issues rang­ing from phys­i­cal con­di­tion­ing to morale.

And it wouldn’t pro­vide a long-term solution.

Police say the ideal answer is to build an evi­dence facil­ity, likely a 7,000-square-foot build­ing on city-owned land off North Quincy Street. Chief Jim Arts said the project could be done for about $550,000, and some work could be done by employ­ees already on the city’s payroll.

Mayor Jim Schmitt agreed the need is sig­nif­i­cant and said he’s con­fi­dent the city stands to get grant money.

“If the fed­eral gov­ern­ment is going to put the fund­ing mech­a­nism in place,” he said, “we’re going to work very hard to make sure that Green Bay gets our share.”

The city has options other than build­ing a new facil­ity, should fed­eral funds not mate­ri­al­ize, Urban said. Green Bay could lease space else­where, or again reor­ga­nize how space is used within the build­ing at 307 S. Adams. But, he said, some­thing must be done.

“We’re almost out of space,” he said. “Within a year or two, we’re going to be at capacity.”

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

NEWSLINE 9, waow.com
Link to Article

Adams County, WI

ADAMS COUNTY (WAOW) – Sheriff Dar­rell Ren­ner con­firms that guns are miss­ing from the Adams County Sheriff’s Department.

Ren­ner declined to elab­o­rate on how many guns were taken or any poten­tial sus­pects. Although he did say that the Depart­ment of Crim­i­nal Inves­ti­ga­tions is look­ing into the case.

Newsline 9 will have details on this story as they become available.

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