Evidence Depository Lockers By Officer Steve Berdrow Burbank Police Department

In most of the police agencies that we have seen, evidence is tagged and packaged in a Report Writing Room.  Therefore, a logical place for the evidence lockers is in that room.  If the Property Section was adjacent to the Report Writing Room, it could utilize the common wall for the lockers, and the lockers could be constructed with a "pass through" configuration.

The lockers themselves come in many variations.  They can be of wood or metal, custom or off-the-shelf.  But a word of caution: Be wary of standard metal lockers that look like school physical education lockers.  Some types of those can be easily opened with a bent paper clip, because they have only a gravity lock.

The easiest type of locker to manage from the Property Officer's perspective is one that remains open until an item of evidence is put inside. The door is then closed and it locks automatically with a spring loaded catch. When properly constructed, they cannot be opened from the Report Writing Room side.

The Property Officer then removes the evidence from that side of the locker, flips the catch to open the door to the Report Writing Room, secures the Property Room side, and the locker is ready to be used again.  No keys to mess with!  If you think that all of those open doors are unsightly (as we did), cover them up with large outer doors that cover several lockers each.  There should be enough space between them to allow the locker doors to be open slightly while the outer door is closed.

An important consideration is to have lockers in a variety of sizes and shapes.  Since many items of evidence are small, consider having one locker with a small opening in a fixed front panel instead of a door.  That way several small items can all go into one locker instead of taking up several lockers.  Sample uses would be for Polaroid photos, drivers licenses, and miscellaneous small papers.  The opening should not be so large that someone could reach a hand through it.

A very useful feature is woven wire gates on the property room side of the lockers.  That way you can see into all of the lockers without having to open each small door to see if there is anything inside.  Just make sure that the gates fit closely to the back of the lockers.  Otherwise someone might be able to reach through an open locker into an adjacent one to tamper with or remove evidence.

Have any other ideas you would like to share?  Send them to IAPE by e-mail or snail mail, or call the 800 number.  Better yet, why not submit an article for the Evidence Log?