Evidence preservation is critical throughout the lifecycle of any physical evidence held by the police. Most states have evidence retention laws on the books that require PDs to hold onto criminal case evidence for a set number of months or years. Many states require homicide evidence to be held forever. Those regulations create storage challenges for the local evidence room as the evidence accumulates much faster than personnel can remove it.

No matter how difficult, law enforcement agencies must ensure the integrity of the evidence they maintain so that justice is served. Failure to preserve evidence properly jeopardizes individual cases and can undermine public trust in our legal system.

In this blog, we’ll examine the complex topic of long-term storage and preservation of evidence at the local level. Best of all, we’ll offer a solution to meeting the demands of long-term evidence preservation that works.

Long-Term Preservation Challenges 

• Lack of Space: No local evidence room in this country can store an infinite inventory, and evidence is piling up in departments everywhere. When this happens, proper long-term storage conditions are challenging to maintain and may be impossible to provide for all types of evidence.
• Environmental Conditions: Storage constraints may limit the number of items kept at their proper temperature and humidity levels. Failure to do so may cause them to degrade, rendering them useless for future examination and courtroom presentation.
• Budget Constraints: Agencies with limited budgets may be unable to afford simple interior infrastructure improvements, conducting outside audits, or maintaining minimum staffing levels.
• Long-Term Preservation Recognition and Planning: Police departments continually try to improve their performance and provide their communities with the most efficient and effective services possible. This applies to the local property and evidence function as well. Over the years, the scientific and law enforcement communities have worked together and separately to improve evidence collection, examination, testing, and initial storage. However, it could be argued that long-term evidence storage and preservation haven’t gotten equal consideration as (pardon the pun) evidenced by the inventory crisis in many PD evidence rooms today.

A New and On-Going Section Making the Consequences of Improper Storage and Preservation Tangible

From Collection to Chaos: Evidence Mishandling Leads to Dismissal

People v. A.M. (NY 2015)

A.M. was charged with drug trafficking in 2014. The case was dismissed in 2015, as transaction records and confiscated narcotics could not be located. The PD admitted that the evidence locker used had not been secured.

Cases like People v. A.M. punctuate the need for rigorous evidence management procedures and demonstrate why they must be followed without fail.

Best Practices for Evidence Storage and Preservation

• Climate Controls: Maintaining appropriate temperature and humidity levels.
• Efficient Use of Space: Maximizing storage capacity without compromising access.
• Proper Packaging: Ensuring evidence is packaged to prevent contamination and degradation.
• Regular Inventory Audits: Conduct frequent audits to ensure evidence is accounted for and properly stored.
• Training: Providing continuous training for staff on evidence handling and storage protocols.
• Policies and Procedures: Implementing comprehensive policies and procedures to guide evidence management.
• Planning for the Future: Developing long-term strategies to address evidence storage needs.

Words of Caution: Outside Storage Containers or Pods 

It may be tempting for a department to rent one of those big old box-car-type or pod-type storage units to add to their storage capacity. Units like that would increase inventory capacity, to be sure, but what happens when that limited space fills up? And will those containers preserve what’s inside? Let’s briefly explore this option and its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages 

• Temporary Solution: Increase the amount of available storage space.
• Cost Effective: Containers may be fairly inexpensive for short-term use.

Disadvantages

• Logistics: It can be tough to place the container to ensure it is secure and monitored 24/7/365. Its location could cause access and lack of space problems, like parking, outside the station house. Modern inventory tracking systems that use radio frequencies may only work in the evidence room, creating a duo, paper, and computer-based tracking system. Such a system lends itself to mistakes in documentation and unneeded extra work to rectify them. Any facility managed by agency personnel separate from the evidence room itself adds time to retrieving evidence and any task associated with using it. Leadership should expect extra effort and time to complete the work related to an outside container.
• Weather: High or low temperatures, severe weather, flooding, and other environmental conditions can easily complicate their use.
• Maintaining Evidence Integrity: The weather conditions may cause certain items to degrade or even be destroyed. The documentation and chain of custody records may prove more challenging to complete while escalating the chance for human error.
• Regulations Compliance: External containers may not adhere to state laws, satisfy best practices, or follow the agency’s own policies on evidence storage.
• Legal Issues: Any deviances in storage or preservation regulations that affect evidence on hand can be challenged in court. If a judge agrees, evidence may be ruled inadmissible, or the case could be dismissed. An agency may be liable if evidence is lost, no longer viable, or destroyed due to improper storage conditions.

The risks and challenges of using outside containers can significantly impact the efficiency and effectiveness of the local PD evidence room. Having to defend itself in just one lawsuit arising from this storage option could easily wipe out any cost savings and damage the department’s reputation. We recommend proceeding with an abundance of caution when considering outside storage containers.

Conclusion

Preserving evidence for months or years isn’t easy. It can become impossible in facilities that are overwhelmed with evidence. Most preservation problems involve evidence that requires special environmental storage conditions. 

No matter the amount of new evidence coming in, it will get stored. But it may not be adequately preserved. And if it’s not, it probably can’t be. 

And therein lies the rub. Evidence must remain preserved.

It’s a law, best practice, regulation, protocol, procedure, and the right thing to do. It’s all of those things. Evidence preservation allows us to take a second look at what we use to help us make big, life-changing decisions within our criminal justice system. And we don’t always get them right the first time.

So, how do law enforcement agencies preserve evidence in the long term?

Fortress Plus Solutions 

The answer to that question is Fortress Plus Solutions.

FPS is a private company providing law enforcement with long-term evidence storage and preservation services. FPS is located in greater Chicago, allowing them to service thousands of departments and other entities such as art galleries, prosecutors, defense attorneys, private collectors, and others who require safe, secure storage services. Additionally, Fortress Plus Solutions ensures the preservation of all items they store, regardless of the duration.

FPS does so in a warehouse-type facility designed from the ground up to securely store, preserve, and provide enough storage space for clients for years and years to come. 

All the preservation measures mentioned in this piece are in place and already preserving their law enforcement client’s evidentiary items. 

Fortress Plus Solutions was the brainchild of retired and active law enforcement professionals who oversee its operations and have worked with evidence management regulations for decades. They know their clients and understand their needs.

And that includes preservation.

Your solution is out there. Take the long-term evidence storage and preservation load off your personnel’s shoulders.

Contact Fortress Plus Solutions today! 888-301-1320 or Email: Contact FPS

Okay, maybe “dirty little secret” is a bit much. Still, one factor leading to today’s evidence room overcrowding crisis is the state-mandated evidence retention periods that police agencies must abide by. Our blogs have alluded to the myriad of state laws, standards, best practices, and policies and procedures law enforcement agencies must follow hundreds of times now. But we’ve never delved into how evidence retention laws affect the operations of evidence rooms across the country, and more specifically, we’ve not discussed their impact on the inventories that police agencies must maintain. We’re about to take on that topic, discuss why those laws are essential, and explore how to lessen their impacts.

Evidence Retention Periods: What are They and What do They Do?

Evidence retention periods are state laws that mandate the time agencies must hold onto criminal case evidence. These periods last well beyond the end of the initial finding of guilt or innocence, dismissal of the case, or the closure/suspension of the investigation. These regulations recognize that evidence must remain available for appeals or future legal needs.

Put Yourself in This Person’s Shoes

Every few months, national news outlets have a report such as this – put yourself in this person’s shoes: After spending many years in prison, convicted of a heinous crime, your case is reopened. DNA tests didn’t exist during the investigation. They do now. Such testing is performed on the evidence that remains available – thanks to the state’s retention laws. The results indicate what you have maintained all along. You weren’t even at the crime scene, and you are innocent.

A judge agrees.

You are set free.

That example has to be the most powerful aspect of the retention laws across the country. A close second is identifying the correct perpetrator and charging them with the crime.

Real Life Effects

State-mandated retention periods naturally cause evidence to accumulate over time. No matter the case status, its evidence must stay put and remain viable until its retention period runs its course. That could mean for decades or even forever.

So, evidence rooms continually receive new items while keeping the old. Most evidence facilities weren’t built to accommodate the amount of long-term storage items that they are required to store.

But, store them they must.

That’s when inventories become disorganized. Left to fester like an old sore, the word “disorganized” no longer tells the tale. “Chaotic” becomes a more accurate descriptor of not just the inventory but the environment of the evidence room itself. Individual items become hard to find. They can be misplaced, lost even, stored in places that are too hot or humid, and generally they become much more difficult to manage according to the standards of evidence storage. 

And let’s go back to putting yourself in another’s shoes. If you had to go to work every day in a place that’s truly chaotic – when it doesn’t have to be – how would you feel about your job? Or the organization you work for? How long before your motivation hits zero? And when that happens, what would you do?

Compliance, Constraints, and Maybe Someday?

Agencies must comply with their state’s retention laws. Failure is not an option here as there could be severe legal repercussions if evidence is needed but has already been destroyed.

Most departments cannot afford to build new facilities, and many don’t have the space to do so. While it is not impossible—a police department in central Illinois is about to break ground on a new stand-alone evidence and property facility— but it was seven years in the making. This solution would have to be considered an over-the-horizon solution for most agencies. It would not address the evidence room chaos that calls for immediate action to rectify.

The need to store physical evidence will never go away, at least not with our current technology. Maybe someday we’ll have something like Star Trek’s Holodeck, which used holograms, like millions of them all at once, to create accurate  3-D scenes with which the crew could interact. Apply that technology to evidence inventories. That would save space. Wonder what chain of custody and other legal ramifications would be like for that? Probably pretty complicated, huh?

But it still seems like a good idea.

Solutions and Temporary Fixes

Audits and Purges: Conducting regular audits will identify items eligible for release or destruction. Setting up and sticking to a regular audit schedule will allow personnel to petition the court for an item’s removal as soon as possible after its retention period has been satisfied. This process will purge items from the inventory as quickly as the law allows.

Infrastructure Improvements: Building new or remodeling present facilities can serve as a long-term solution, but departments considering this must take into account that it does nothing to help them in the short term. Interior equipment like high-density shelving units and large-capacity refrigerators can ease overcrowding in evidence rooms and should not be overlooked as a way to maximize storage space.

Technology and Training: Acquiring the most up-to-date evidence management programs, ones that fit your needs and work best for your agency, will go a long way toward helping your personnel manage your inventory. Modern programs feature bar-coding or RFID technology that speeds up check-in and locating items in the inventory. These programs should also include modules that track evidence retention periods and notify personnel automatically when those periods have been satisfied.

Along with appropriate software training, evidence technicians should be formally trained to understand and perform their jobs to the best of their ability. They should be updated on new laws and procedures and equipped to succeed.

And while this doesn’t help with inventories, it could go a long way toward keeping your evidence techs on board your agency. They should be in the loop and informed about what their employer is doing to rectify a chaotic evidence room.

Off-Site Storage: A few private companies scattered across the country specialize in evidence storage, preservation, and management. These companies professionally provide long-term evidence storage and can be the answer to the overcrowded evidence room problem – exacerbated by state retention laws – that police agencies are experiencing today.

Conclusion

While retention laws ensure that evidence is available for future legal needs, they contribute to the growing overcrowding problem in evidence rooms nationwide.

Audits and purging, infrastructure improvements, training and technology upgrades, and off-site storage can all play a role in improving the on-hand criminal evidence inventory crisis that is negatively affecting police operations and, potentially, the criminal justice system itself.

Agencies should be proactive regarding this issue. If you are from a department with no problems with capacity in its evidence room, let this blog serve as a warning and allow you to plan ahead so you don’t reach the crisis stage as many other departments have.

Fortress Plus Solutions

Fortress Plus Solutions is one of those companies just alluded to. Located in the greater Chicago area, its centralized location in the lower forty-eight states allows thousands of law enforcement and other clients to access its services. Staffed with evidence management experts, FPS guarantees it meets or exceeds all the same standards and laws that the public sector must follow. They do so in a modern, secure facility that’s staffed 24/7 and designed to handle the storage and preservation needs of any type and size of evidence you have on hand.

Fortress Plus Solution’s services are customized to its clients’ needs, and its fees reflect that. With over one hundred years of law enforcement leadership experience on staff or directly supporting our mission, we understand modern law enforcement’s budget limitations and that our services must be cost-effective.

And they are.

Contracting with Fortress Plus Solutions is the solution to the increasing evidence management and storage problem facing law enforcement agencies today.

To learn more about our services, click here.