Continuous Improvement Key to Chain of Custody Evidence Excellence

Since 1960, Long Island’s Suffolk County Police Department has racked up awards and gained national recognition, thanks to its high-tech evidence tracking system and keen focus on its continuous improvement. Ever since the tracking system was instituted in 1960—after the five western towns of Suffolk County, New York, decided to merge their police departments into one unit – it has been a source of pride for the Suffolk County Police Department.

Located on Long Island, about 70 miles east of Manhattan, the Suffolk County Police Department has jurisdiction over 560 square miles, protects 1.4 million residents, and collects between 70,000 and 75,000 pieces of evidence annually.

“In 43 years, we’ve never lost a piece of evidence,” said officer Michael Beam, the firearms and narcotics control officer who works in the Property Section.

Because of its sterling reputation, the Suffolk County Property Section has earned numerous awards and national recognition. It has been featured on Discovery Channel’s “Curators of Crime” program, and is used as an example in seminars conducted by the International Association for Property and Evidence. Officials from more than 30 law enforcement agencies have visited Suffolk County to learn about how to improve their own evidence management procedures.

Challenge: Although considered one of the nation’s best, the Suffolk County Police Department has made improving procedures for identifying, managing, and accessing the vast amount of evidence within its system a continuous process.

In 1988, the county became the first in the nation to implement the ACE computerized evidence management system. Processes were further automated in the 1990s when a thermal label printer was added to the system to automatically create evidence labels and eliminate the need for manual labeling.

In late 2002, the Property Section began tracking evidence with bar codes for the first time. As part of the transition, the department began an upgrade from its original ACE DOS-based evidence tracking software from Software Techniques to a newer, Windows-based version called WinACE, which supports bar code data entry.

When police officers collect evidence at the scene of a crime, they bring it back to their respective precincts, where it is signed in and locked up. Lost or stolen property recovered by officers is also submitted to the precincts.

Each day, the assigned officers of the department’s Property Section collect these items from the precincts and bring them to a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. More than 220,000 items are stored in the warehouse where they remain untouched until they are released, destroyed, or requested by a police officer or the district attorney’s office. (The oldest invoice of evidence in the warehouse is from an unsolved 1931 murder.

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