Remember William Shatner’s voice-over during the opening credits for the original Star Trek TV series? It began: “Space. The final frontier.” It perfectly set the stage for the ambitious new sci-fi series about the crew of a starship on a five-year mission to explore beyond our solar system into the reaches of seemingly infinite space.

Outer space may be infinite, but inner space sure isn’t. Today’s police evidence rooms are a testament to that. More evidence is being collected, processed, and stored than ever before. It’s being stored longer, too. The local PD and its personnel are most affected by this increase, but the workload isn’t the problem; the need for more space to properly store and preserve the evidence is the problem. 

To the unfamiliar, police agencies running out of room to properly store their criminal case evidence might seem like a back-burner issue. It is not. In this piece, we’ll look at the overall problem and its effects on the agency and others involved and discuss a private sector solution that’s proven to work.

Maximum Storage Capacity

Your evidence folks can’t just turn on a “No Vacancy” sign if your evidence room has reached its maximum storage capacity (MSC). Are you thinking, maximum storage capacity? There is no such thing – you’re right, but think about MSC this way. MSC has been reached when every container, no matter where it’s stored, vault, refrigerator, freezer, safe, anywhere, and anything you use within your evidence room to store and preserve your evidence on hand properly – is full. Nothing is out of place. It’s orderly – even within the refrigerators, the contents are stacked neatly, labels visible, all easily accessible. It’s evidence room Nirvana in the basement of the local PD.

At MSC, the entire inventory meets the conditions required for its preservation.

With the next item of evidence submitted, you’re now “over capacity,”  

But there’s still space to use if you have to, right? Of course, how much depends on your interior storage infrastructure, room size and design, etc.

It’s important to have that “over capacity” line in the sand drawn to assess the operations of the evidence room because now, things can get messy – literally.

Inside an Over-Capacity Evidence Room

Let’s use one shelving unit’s top shelf as an example. Its deteriorating condition can be extrapolated and applied throughout the evidence room. 

Imagine a five-shelf unit open on both sides. Look at the top shelf. Eight plastic bins sit side by side. The bins are translucent and open from the top. We can see that all the bins are full, and all contain sealed brown paper evidence bags. Each bin holds a different-sized brown bag.

We revisit this shelf a few days later. Now, three bins have two brown bags sitting on top of them. Four others have one. 

On our third visit, the scene changed a lot. We are looking at brown bags of all sizes mixed into one big pile, covering the bins from end to end. There are a few evidence bags wedged between the bins, too. 

During our final visit we see that not much has changed except that there are now two storage bins on the floor next to the shelving unit. They’re open. A handful of brown bags are in the floor bins, along with four or five clear plastic evidence bags, all containing what we assume is an item of evidence. We also make note of a few brown paper bags that are now lying on top of the bins on the other shelves. A quick glance into the bins on the floor reveals, along with the evidence bags, two balled-up brown bags, discarded tape used for sealing evidence containers, and a banana Moon Pie wrapper. 

Over time, the entire evidence room will look kinda like our favorite shelving unit and its surroundings. But worse. Stacks of evidence containers take up floor space throughout the room and block access to the evidence that has remained properly stored. The tops of filing cabinets, any flat surface really, have become prime real estate for storage, including the tops of evidence containers, no matter where they might be. Cabinets for supplies and forms have been repurposed for holding evidence; the supplies now sit on a folding table in the hallway. 

Coping

Your evidence personnel are doing their best with what they have. But the evidence is coming in faster – much more so – than is going out.  

The facility has become cluttered, disorganized, a maze to navigate, and more challenging to work in. Unless addressed soon, the evidence room will become more disheveled than Jack Nicolson’s hair toward the end of The Shining. 

This chaotic environment can negatively affect inventory integrity, chain of custody documentation, proper preservation of evidence, and the efficiency of the evidence retention process. Let’s take a look at these critical functions.

Over Capacity: Concerns and Consequences

Inventory Integrity: Evidence can be more easily misplaced when it’s stored anywhere and everywhere within a facility. An agency should be able to account for the location of a particular piece of evidence at any time while it is in their custody. This can be very difficult with evidence scattered throughout the facility. 

Unbroken Chain of Custody: An unbroken chain of custody record must be maintained for every item stored within an agency’s evidence room. This record will document the arrival, movement within, and departure of the item, along with the corresponding date, time, and name of the person responsible. The unbroken part of the chain is what’s important here. A gap in the record indicates a period when the agency cannot account for its location and status. The admissibility of the evidence will almost always be challenged in court if there is a break in the chain of custody.

Evidence Preservation: Evidence must remain appropriately preserved throughout its stay in the local PD evidence room. Some require special storage conditions to maintain them long-term. Those conditions can be environmental and include storage within specific temperature and humidity ranges. Personnel must recognize the special storage status of these items and store them in a location that satisfies the particular requirements.

Evidence Retention Periods: Each state has its own laws regarding how long evidence must be held after adjudication or other event that would justify the release or destruction of evidence on hand. Basic evidence management software can track retention periods and notify personnel when items have reached their limits. This notification should be acted upon immediately to begin the removal process. 

Many agencies have been operating “Over Capacity” for a long time now; others are close to that milestone. Departments that can avoid “going there” altogether are best positioned to prevent mistakes and serve the justice system by providing admissible evidence without fail.

Private Sector Solution

Last summer, Fortress Plus Solutions (FPS) opened its doors in the greater Chicago area. FPS is a private company dedicated to providing law enforcement with evidence management and long-term storage and preservation services. FPS meets or exceeds all the standards that police agencies must abide by regarding evidence management. FPS employs retired law enforcement and other experts who operate a facility that is second to none in physical security, internal climate control, evidence tracking systems, and on-site staff, which allows them to constantly monitor all of its systems and respond immediately to any anomalies in any of their operations. They also offer secure transportation services between their facility and client agencies.

Conclusion

Police evidence rooms all across the country are at or nearing their inventory capacities. Evidence is coming in faster than ever before, creating a backlog of items held in the local agency’s evidence room. This situation is nearly overwhelming the facility, hindering its operations and personnel. The problem, caused by a need for more adequate space in evidence rooms, needs a solution. Fortress Plus Solutions (FPS), a private company specializing in long-term evidence storage and preservation services for law enforcement, offers a solution to this problem in the Chicago area. FPS will store any agency’s long-term evidence off-site at their state-of-the-art facility, creating space to work with and normalize operations in your evidence room. 

FORTRESS PLUS SOLUTIONS

Fortress Plus Solutions provides safe, secure, handling, documented transportation, storage, and preservation of evidence and property for the long term. If your items require special storage conditions – we provide that. In addition, we offer evidence room audits to help law enforcement maintain best practices and accurate and up-to-date inventory records. In our blog, we post informative articles about privatized long-term storage, the auditing process, and more. To learn more about our services, click here. 

Privatizing long-term evidence storage for law enforcement is a cost-effective, practical option for many agencies. However, the practice of safeguarding, handling, and storing criminal case evidence is governed by federal and state law, rules of evidence, and even the fundamentals of science in some cases. All these regulations must be strictly adhered to. This piece focuses on accountability and adherence to those regulations by private providers.

1. STEADFAST ACCOUNTABILITY 

Accountability in all of its operations is vital for a private company providing long-term evidence storage for law enforcement. Accountability builds and maintains the trust required for law enforcement to hand over a portion of the job they’ve been doing for years to the private sector. Within it, they entrust a company with irreplaceable items that must be maintained, sometimes for years, for potential use in future criminal court cases. Accountability is a process. The company promises to provide its services efficiently, effectively, and lawfully, and the client agency, and sometimes others, ensure they do. 

2. REGULATORY STANDARDS COMPLIANCE

The laws and regulatory standards of evidence storage can be complex. Private providers are often staffed by former law enforcement personnel considered to be experts in the field of evidence management. And many of these experts have worked at their companies since their inception. They have years of experience interpreting and working with all compliance standards and have “written the book” of procedures and compliance for their companies. 

3. CHAIN OF CUSTODY DOCUMENTATION

Maintaining and proving an unbroken chain of custody record for each item of evidence is imperative for law enforcement and private providers alike. Providers know this and follow established procedures that document the receiving, handling, and storage placement of any piece of evidence in their care. Advanced tracking systems are utilized in the process, and the precise location of a given item of evidence is available at any time. When an item is retrieved, the process continues, maintaining an unbroken chain of custody record for the storage lifetime of that particular item.

4. SECURITY

Providing a secure and well-monitored facility should not be overlooked in the accountability process. Private providers design facilities with modern access control, video surveillance, multiple alarm systems, vaults, and armories to keep the evidence safe and untampered with. Regularly scheduled security assessments and internal audits ensure the highest level of security is maintained at all times.

5. TRANSPARENCY

Law enforcement should expect transparency from a private provider. A professional company will always maintain open lines of communication with law enforcement. One way they do this is by regular reporting to their client agencies. Reports can include:

• Access records
• The status of an agency’s evidence on hand
• Any storage condition anomalies
• Unusual occurrences at the facility, such as a power outage

Reports of this type should include the anomalies or unusual occurrences duration and the action taken, to address it. Transparency builds trust, the company’s reputation, and is another part of the accountability process.

6. EXTERNAL OVERSIGHT

Private providers often have third-party organizations complete thorough audits on their facilities, operations, level of security, chain of custody documentation, and regulations compliance. These audits are conducted to show proof that they are utilizing the industry’s best practices. They also serve as a practical examination of their operations to help them identify areas where they could operate more efficiently. Depending on the type of audit and organization conducting it, the company may receive an official certification indicating its operations and regulatory compliance meet or exceed industry standards.

SUMMARY

Private providers employ former law enforcement evidence management experts and are well-versed in all the aspects involved in providing long-term evidence storage services to the public sector. They realize that they must be and will be – held accountable for their operations, whether it be by their client agencies or the external audit process. Companies hold themselves accountable by conducting security assessments and internal audits of their operations. By maintaining open lines of communication with their client agencies, private providers bolster their accountability and demonstrate their services comply with all the regulations, laws, and standards that govern the long-term evidence storage industry.

FORTRESS PLUS SOLUTIONS

Fortress Plus Solutions provides safe, secure storage, handling, and transportation of evidence and property requiring long-term and special storage conditions. In addition, we offer evidence-room audits to help law enforcement maintain accurate and up-to-date evidence-room inventory records. And in our blog, we post informative articles about privatized long-term storage. To learn more about our services, click here. 

Traditionally, law enforcement agencies have stored evidence within in-house facilities. Now, they have an option for their long-term evidence storage. The private sector has stepped up and provided long-term evidence storage solutions for police agencies, and this option has proven quite valuable and effective.

Many standards must be adhered to in the proper preservation of evidence. Any deviations may result in the evidence being ruled inadmissible in court. And these standards apply to whoever has it in their control.

It’s important to note that storage and preservation go hand-in-hand. Law enforcement must store evidence in varying, particular environments to preserve them properly. 

This piece compares the private and public sectors’ approaches to preserving specific types of evidence.

Private Sector vs. Public Agencies 

If appropriate for the type of evidence, private companies will wrap and label individual items and use RFID or other applied technology to track evidence within their facilities. These systems pinpoint the item’s location, maintaining accurate chain of custody documentation and adding another layer of protection for the items in the care. Their warehouse-type facilities are ready to scale to their client’s needs and have temperature and humidity-controlled zones that preserve evidence in the proper environment.

Many, if not most, of today’s police evidence rooms are struggling with a lack of evidence storage space. Few have the specialized infrastructure needed to store all that evidence in compliance with modern best practices, especially for the long term. 

1. Firearms and Ballistic Evidence

Most private companies have separate, secure, monitored, and maintained armories within their facilities to store firearms and other ballistic evidence. This provides an extra layer of security and ensures firearm evidence remains appropriately preserved. Most public agencies lack the facilities to keep all of their firearms stored in a separate, secure space within their evidence rooms. 

2. Documents

Paper documents are sensitive in nature and can quickly degrade over time. Proper preservation involves correct initial packaging, repackaging after examination, and storage in temperature and humidity-controlled spaces. Aging evidence rooms lack the space and infrastructure to store documents suitably long-term, risking degradation. Private providers have designed their facilities to accommodate all types of evidence and excel in preserving items that require special handling and storage.

3. Biological Evidence

DNA samples, blood-stained items, and other biological items require special handling, preservation techniques, and storage conditions. While a local evidence room’s personnel are typically up to most tasks, long-term storage could be more problematic. Unless they work in an agency with a brand-new facility, the shortage of space and the design of their evidence room hinder their ability to abide by all of the standards of evidence management. The private sector provides these services as a matter of routine. They have the facilities and follow specific procedures to store biological evidence using today’s best practices.

4. Large or Odd-Shaped Evidence

Evidence only sometimes comes in sizes and shapes that easily fit on a shelf. The truth is, almost anything you can imagine can become physical evidence used in a crime, and preservation and long-term storage may be required. When comparing the space between the local evidence room and the private company’s facility, there is no comparison. The private facility is enormous in comparison and can easily store large or odd-shaped evidence.

5. Vehicles

Most agencies rely on their local impound lot to store vehicles. These lots are fenced and locked, and in larger communities, they may even be staffed round-the-clock. But for most of these impound lots, the vehicles are stored outside, in a remote location, at the mercy of the weather, and sitting behind chain-link fences offering minimal protection. These conditions are not conducive to vehicle preservation. 

Private companies offer a much better option. They have the facilities to store and preserve vehicles for the long haul. Offering both interior and exterior storage options, what separates them from the local impound lot is their level of preservation expertise and security. Private providers often wrap vehicles to properly preserve them – whether stored inside or outside their facilities. Outside storage is accomplished behind solid walls, so their lots are not visible to the public. These outdoor storage areas are access controlled, alarmed, and video monitored 24-7 by on-site staff.

Conclusion

There is a stark difference between the public and private sectors regarding preserving and storing evidence. Most local PD evidence rooms are not large enough to hold the amount of evidence they have on hand. Neither were they designed to properly preserve their inventories, including many types of evidence with varying environmental requirements.

The private sector has provided long-term evidence storage options for many years now. Besides having the space to scale to their client’s needs, private providers have the facilities, infrastructure, and protocols to store evidence by adhering to modern standards. Private providers offer an option to law enforcement, one that ensures each type of evidence is maintained securely, constantly monitored, properly documented, and stored within the needed environment to preserve the evidence long-term. 

FORTRESS PLUS SOLUTIONS 

Fortress Plus Solutions provides safe, secure, documented transportation, handling, and storage of evidence and property for the long term. If your items require special storage conditions – we provide that. In addition, we offer evidence room audits to help law enforcement maintain best practices and accurate and up-to-date inventory records. In our blog, we post informative articles about privatized long-term storage and the auditing process. To learn more about our services, click here.