For the past twelve years I have had the pleasure of instructing property management classes at over 100 different locations from coast to coast.  During this time I have visited nearly that many property rooms, and have learned something from every one about property room design, policy or operation.  For the past nine years, I have been involved in bringing into existence a new Police and Fire Headquarters facility for the City of Burbank.  As the police project manager for the new $30 million facility, I have had the opportunity to incorporate the benefit of all my property management travel, networking and site visits in the design of the property room for our new facility.

In this first of two articles, I am going to lead you through nine years of planning and construction up to the final result - a state-of-the-art facility with a Grand Opening scheduled for January 9, 1998.  In the next issue I will share the trials and tribulations of the actual move, and those property room design flaws that you don't find until you are actually in operation.  It's really an exciting time to see all of the research, visits, interviews and planning come to fruition.  Hopefully this article will provide a number of observations that can be incorporated into your plans to design or remodel your property room.

THE PLAN

It is a fact that very few architects have significant experience in designing law enforcement facilities.  It also is factual that no two law enforcement agencies are in the exact same situation or operate in the exact same manner.  Every agency is different, so every property room needs to be different!  Don't let the architect talk you into something just because it worked for your neighbor (or because that's what he knows how to design).  You are the client, and you need to visit as many different facilities as possible.  Find out what works in what situations, and what doesn't work.  Learn from the mistakes others have made, and then design your property room around your needs and situation, not around the experience of the architect.

Remember - very few property room personnel have been architects, and even fewer architects have worked in a property room.  Input from property room staff is as important as input from architects in the design process.  If management wants a functional property room, they must let the property room personnel provide input during the design process.

In the last Evidence Log (Vol. 97, No. 3, p. 15) a diagram was shared illustrating effective layout adjacencies for a property room.  The size of the agency has little bearing on the concept of adjacency, which is a critical planning element.  Following are some of the adjacency concerns:

Always consider placing the property room in an area contiguous to the room where officers package evidence and write their reports, so you can provide pass-through lockers from report writing to the property room processing area.  Why carry the evidence from one part of the building to another?  Doing so is not only inefficient, but it introduces additional opportunities for contamination of the evidence. The picture at left shows the property room side of pass-thru lockers, with steel mesh doors.  They allow ventilation and you can see if evidence is in each locker.  The picture at right shows the report writing room side.  In the evidence cabinet three of the right side and all of the left side doors are open, allowing you to see the rear wire doors.  The other doors have been closed.  On the far left are report form shelves.

Never place the property room office within the property storage area.  Having the office outside of the actual property room helps ensure the integrity of the storage area by providing an area for various types of transactions within the office without any of the parties penetrating the actual storage area.

Never store supplies in the property storage area.  Supplies need their own area, which should also be adjacent to the property office, for several reasons.  A significant one is that the Watch Commander
probably needs a key to the supply room for situations outside office hours when an unusual need requires access to additional supplies.  This could vary from printer ribbons or blank forms, to vests or portable radios, but whatever the need, it should not require violation of the sanctity of the property room.  Having such items in their own storage area protects the property room.

Always set aside secured space in the property room for high profile items such as firearms, narcotics, money, and jewelry.  Depending on the size of the agency, separate space may be a locked file cabinet, a small safe, a caged area, or a walk-in vault.  Whatever the space, it should be wholly contained within the secure, alarmed property room, and it should have some additional level of security.  Ideally this would include a separate alarm with a different combination.

Always provide a counter for detectives and officers to pick up property.  This should be separate from the public counter, but it must allow them to conduct transactions without actually entering the storage area.  This could be as simple as a Dutch door with a counter between the property office and the corridors as shown in the photograph at right.

Always consider providing a public counter at the property room office.  This avoids property room personnel having to go somewhere else in the building to accept or release the property, which of course involves carrying the property in one direction or the other in addition to being very labor intensive.  During a recent audit of a relatively large police agency, it was determined that the twelve property clerks walked over 100 miles a year moving property from the property room to the front counter or visa versa.  A public counter adjacent to the property office would have saved a couple of weeks of walking.

Always consider some type of temporary bulk storage area where officers can temporarily store bicycles, car parts, etc., during non-business hours.  This may be a large shipping container, a caged area, or small room.  Having the location close to the parking lot for access by the officers, and to the exterior property room door for access by property room staff, should always be considered.  The Watch Commander could control the key to this location, which should not provide access to the interior of the property room.

Always consider the types and sizes of evidence that fills your property room before you order your shelving.  A careful space analysis needs to be conducted, including input from experts in storage options.  This is also a great time to reexamine the way you are storing your evidence.  Making use of standardized boxes, bins, trays and containers, even if they are specially constructed, could mean substantial savings. These decisions need to be part of the planning process - don' t wait until you've occupied the building.  The selection of containers impacts shelving selection, and shelving selection could affect the dimensions of the rooms, including ceiling height.  It could also affect the layout of the lighting, or require track being laid in the flooring.

Always factor some type of high density shelving into the equation.  Properly designed high density shelving can double the efficiency of property room storage, resulting in significant square footage reductions.

THE PURGE

In the design of a new facility property room, the architect usually performs what is called a needs assessment or architectural program to determine size requirements and particular adjacency issues in the sizing and design of the property room.  Unfortunately the architect usually has to do this in a situation in which the room is packed to the ceiling.  In some cases the inventory has been placed in additional rooms throughout the building.  The volume of property and evidence is measured, linear feet of needed property storage is calculated, and the architect comes up with future projections for space needs.  It is not unusual for these calculations to double or triple the projected space for the future.

However the needs assessor probably doesn't understand that property rooms generally don't need more space as much as they need systems to routinely purge old, unneeded property and evidence.  During our site visits, I visited a new police facility with approximately half the number of sworn officers (75) as we have in Burbank (160).  Their new property room encompassed 7,500 square feet.  With Burbank's efficient purging program, we are expecting that less than half that square footage will last us for 20 years.  In all probability, the other agency could have modified its purging practices and had sufficient space in a 2,000 square foot facility!

Having purging policies that routinely (monthly) evaluate property and evidence can reduce building costs dramatically.  My dozen years of property experience have convinced me of an almost universal maxim: Most "space problems" aren't space problems at all, they're policy problems.  It is generally agreed by law enforcement personnel that only about one percent of property and evidence ever goes to court.  Let's manage the evidence we need, and purge the junk that never goes to court.

Dependent upon various statutes and organizational philosophies, we sometimes have to ask ourselves, "Why do we really need to keep all of this stuff?" Facing a move to a new property room in a new facility, my agency obviously would like to minimize the amount of property we have to transport, and to accomplish that goal we are actively purging as much property as possible.  We hope to have an absolute minimum inventory on the day of the move.  I contend that such a goal may be appropriate for any law enforcement agency, regardless of whether or not they are facing a move.

Two opposing viewpoints on property room management exist, and they could be characterized by these positions: How can we get enough space to keep everything? or How much can we dispose of without hindering prosecutions?

An example of the first position is a department that I consulted with recently that felt that they should keep all evidence forever.  Their department purged all written reports after ten years, but management still was unwilling to get rid of the evidence in those cases - even when there was no crime report in their files to document when, why, or how the evidence was obtained by the department.

An example of the second position is a look that my own agency took at a topic that is almost sacred in most agencies: homicide evidence.  For a city of just over 100,000 people, Burbank is blessed by an extremely low crime rate, especially for homicide and other violent crime.  A recent inventory of our property room found that we had evidence related to over 60 old homicides.  Further investigation found that in 45 of the cases the suspect had been arrested, convicted, and imprisoned.

Some logical questions followed.  Was the suspect still in jail?  Was the suspect still alive?  Detectives checked criminal records and found that in two of the cases the suspects had died in jail, and in six other cases the suspect had completed his term and been released.  Was it really necessary to continue storing the "nonevidence," which had never even been booked into court as evidence?  We didn't think so, and a policy change allowed us to dispose of property from 8 of the 45 solved cases.

Disposing of 17% of our closed case homicide evidence is more significant when you realize that homicide evidence normally is kept forever.  Was it ever really necessary?  Obviously such a policy decision should only be made in concert with legal council and other related agencies, such as prosecutors and state parole.

Every department should have a regular purging process of some type.  In preparation for our move, our agency can just confirm that each of our regularly established procedures are as close as possible to current at the time of the move.  For example, we will schedule a narcotics "burn" shortly before the move date. We will schedule a weapons destruction with our Rangemaster for about the same time.  We will even schedule a pick-up by the private auctioneer company that auctions off our other property for disposal.

The ideal on moving day would be for all detectives to be current on signing off property for disposal, and for the property room staff to be current on actually disposing of the property.  We don't want to handle any property an extra time.  Wouldn't that be a great goal for every property room at the end of every month, whether or not they are moving?

THE MOVE

The follow-up article to this one will be in the next issue of the Evidence Log.  It will highlight what worked and what didn't work in the actual move to the new facility.  Hopefully both our successes and our mistakes will be beneficial to you in the future, whether you are planning for a move, or just reviewing your property room operation.