Securing – and organizing – the evidence

July 07--PULLMAN -- The most secure room in the Pullman Police Department looks something like a cross between a mailroom, a second-hand store and a busy catering business.

Thousands of manila envelopes and brown paper bags line the shelves, along with an assortment of old hubcaps, empty liquor bottles, battered suitcases and other detritus.

This is the department's evidence storage locker, where property and physical evidence from various crime scenes is stored, sometimes for decades, until it is no longer needed.

Rick Peringer, the department's property and evidence specialist, said there are about 5,000 items in the room now, down from more than 7,100 at the beginning of 2013. A second room in the basement holds larger items.

"I tell people this is like a garage where all your neighbors come to store their stuff," Peringer said. "When I started here, it used to be every square inch of floor space was filled. It took about three years just to get enough empty space to move things around. Now everything is bar-coded and filed so it can be easily found."

The room has about four levels of security to prevent unauthorized entries. Peringer is typically the only person who has access, except when he's sick or on vacation. Even Police Chief Gary Jenkins can't enter without signing in, and only then if Peringer is present.

Commander Chris Tennant said the purpose of the security and strict procedures is to maintain the chain of custody -- the ability to document when evidence came into police custody and who examined it, to prevent any tampering that might affect the outcome of a case.

"If we lose track of evidence or the chain is broken, the evidence is compromised," Tennant said. "I had a case when I was a rookie where there was a stolen car and someone had boiled poppy seeds in the back for opiates. I sealed the evidence and put it in the locker but forgot to lock it. The prosecutor threw the whole case out because of that, even though no one had touched the evidence."

Pullman's evidence room has 12 double-sided lockers built into one wall. Officer are responsible for collecting evidence at a crime scene, Tennant said. Then they seal it in an appropriate container, put it in the locker, lock it and slip the key into a drop box that can only be accessed from inside the evidence room. From that point on, they no longer have physical access to the evidence.

Peringer will open the locker from inside the evidence room, bar-code the items and store them until they're sent to the state crime lab or needed in court.

"A good portion of this stuff has never left the room," he said.

It's a much more secure system than was typical when he started in law enforcement.

"When I started, each officer had their own evidence box with a cheap-o lock," Peringer said. "You were never not in custody of your own evidence. You could go in and tamper with it. I don't think people did, but now once you prepare it and seal it, it's under someone else's control."

The Whitman County Sheriff's Office has a similar system.

"After a busy weekend, it's not uncommon for all the lockers to be full," said Sheriff Brett Myers.

What qualifies as evidence can be a tricky thing. Myers recalled one suspected homicide case where officers noticed a small item near the body. It turned out to be a corner of a playing card that had been ripped away. Days later, while searching the vehicle of a suspect, the matching card was found, helping to establish that the person had been at the crime scene.

How much evidence is collected also depends on the nature of the crime. It isn't unusual for a couple of dozen items to be collected, Myers said, while a complex scene could easily generate hundreds of items.

"Sometimes officers spend a whole day just entering items into our evidence system," he said.

Whitman County's evidence storage room holds more than 3,200 items -- including nearly 2,100 for the Quad Cities Drug Task Force.

"I'd say probably a third of the room is just drugs and drug paraphernalia," Myers said.

The oldest evidence dates back to at least the 1970s, and some may still be around from before that.

There are only a few ways things can be removed from an evidence room. In some cases the statute of limitations has expired, so there's no way to prosecute a crime even if it were solved. Other times a plea bargain is reached or a case is dismissed. Stolen property can also be returned, as long as the prosecutor says it's no longer needed.

Peringer said a lot of his job is researching older cases to determine if evidence can be destroyed or removed.

"We try the best we can to get things back to their owners," he said. "If it's not illegal for them to possess it, we try to get it back. If you're a burglary victim, we don't want to hold your things longer than necessary."

Some items like bikes and clothing may also be donated to charity. Others go to insurance companies that paid the claims for the items. Many items, though, end up being destroyed either because they're illegal (like drugs and paraphernalia), the owner can't be located, or they have no value.

"Last year was the first time we got rid of more stuff than we took in," Peringer said. "Whenever I'm in the evidence room, I'm either logging stuff in or researching cases to try and get rid of things."

Although he jokes about putting himself out of a job, he knows there will always be a need to store evidence from crimes -- even though it isn't always necessary to getting a conviction.

"With things like theft, it isn't the (physical) evidence that gets them caught," Peringer said. "They tell their friends what they did."

"They post it on Facebook," Tennant said.

Spence may be contacted at bspence@lmtribune.com or (208) 791-9168.

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