Key takeaways
- Understand how property and evidence failures can destroy prosecutions and public trust.
- Learn why regular audits and separation of duties are essential safeguards against misconduct.
- See how retention schedules, packaging standards and documentation keep your system audit-ready.
- Recognize that technology alone doesn’t ensure integrity — leadership oversight does.
By Cam Coppess
All law enforcement agencies are tasked with collecting and preserving evidence from crime scenes in pursuit of successful criminal prosecution. The public also looks to law enforcement agencies to hold and protect found property turned over to the agency. Failure to properly meet these expectations erodes the trust that the community has in its law enforcement agency. Cases lost because of breaches in the chain of custody or property lost because of mishandling or worse can give the agency a black eye.
Property and evidence storage is a finite space that, without proper management, can quickly become full. An agency should establish policies, procedures and processes that protect the integrity of the property and evidence they collect, provide oversight to ensure accountability for the items they hold, and create a path to legally dispose of items when no longer needed. The property and evidence room is not a storage closet. It’s a space with constant movement, and it requires strong safeguards and oversight to protect the integrity of the items held.
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Build accountability through audits
To protect the integrity of the property and evidence function — and the integrity of the agency — policies and processes should include an audit function. To show that the agency is meeting the goals in its policy, leaders need to review and inspect their processes. An independent audit provides feedback to ensure that the property and evidence process is producing the outcomes the agency and community expect.
When we fail to inspect what we expect, we get unintended outcomes. Learning that an agency has misplaced evidence, or that the security of the property room was lacking and allowed an employee to take items, or trusting one individual to have full access to property rooms, logs and disposition documentation without oversight — these are all signs of a lack of accountability. By implementing policies and processes that are audited, the agency holds itself and employees accountable to the community it serves.
One of the first questions an agency administrator — be that sheriff, chief or city manager — should ask is, “Can I account for all of the items in the property and evidence system?” This includes seized property, found property and property with evidentiary value. If you cannot answer this question easily, or at all, you should request assistance as soon as possible to complete an independent audit of your property and evidence process and storage area.
Audit during leadership transitions
As a best practice, an agency should conduct a full audit of the property and evidence room or storage areas at the time of a leadership change. This allows the outgoing administrator to separate from the agency with a clean report and allows the incoming administrator to start with knowledge of what they will immediately be held accountable for.
If the change of administration occurs because of a breach of trust, it is even more important to audit the property and evidence area. The audit provides the new administrator with insight into problems that may need to be addressed and helps them understand what they are responsible for at the start of their appointment.
When the initial audit is conducted, it may reveal missing items or property that no longer needs to be held, either because the statute of limitations has expired for evidence or the requirement for retaining property for safekeeping has expired. The audit may also reveal opportunities for improvement in the agency’s property management policies, processes and systems.
A complete property and evidence audit should include a review of current policy, physical storage areas and workflows for seizing and storing property and evidence. The process should document the chain of custody from collection to release.
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Eliminate single-person control
The audit should reveal any fatal flaws in the current system and suggest improvements that may mitigate risk. A common problem is allowing one person to have full access to the entire system. Because of limited resources, it’s easy to assign one person to be responsible for the property and evidence function. But no one, including the head administrator, should have “all of the keys to the kingdom.”
Agencies should establish checks and balances that separate duties between employees responsible for processing property and evidence, managing security and releasing property. At a minimum, there should be a separation of duties and documentation of these processes to protect employees and the integrity of the property and evidence system. Security and oversight sometimes create extra steps and can be inconvenient, but one must ask: what is the value of integrity?
Some standard security steps in the property and evidence process include:
- Limiting who has access to property after initial entry into the system.
- Requiring documentation for each movement of an item — who moved it, why and where it was placed.
- Keeping an access log for every entry and exit from the property room.
- Using video security to document the exterior and interior of the property and evidence storage area, with oversight managed by someone outside of the evidence unit.
- Applying extra security for firearms, drugs and cash, such as dual authentication, double locks or two-person signoffs for access or destruction.
Manage retention and legal compliance
Because storage space is finite, agencies must establish retention schedules that allow personnel to assess items and determine whether they must still be held or can be released or disposed of. Many states have laws or statutes that provide guidance about how long agencies must legally hold evidence or found property. Most criminal acts have a statute of limitation for prosecution. When this is exceeded, evidence may no longer be relevant and may be released or destroyed. The agency should work with its district or prosecuting attorney to determine what items may no longer need to be held.
Found property or property held for safekeeping also has laws or statutes regulating how long it must be held and what steps must be taken before the agency may release, sell or dispose of it. Each state may have different requirements, so agencies should review and follow their laws to legally dispose of this type of property.
The property and evidence system must include a step for reducing the number of items it holds. Holding onto items that an agency is not legally responsible for creates unnecessary burden and liability.
Standardize, train and leverage technology
Standardizing the process for evidence collection, packaging and labeling can make the overall property and evidence process easier for staff. Some agencies have created packaging manuals with photos and instructions on how to package certain types of property and evidence. These manuals are useful during onboarding and training, helping all employees understand the importance of chain of custody and evidence integrity.
Once an agency has established property and evidence policies and procedures, it’s important to continually review them to ensure they comply with relevant law and case law. Ongoing training helps staff stay current with best practices.
Agencies can use paper systems with duplicate copies or digital systems. Many Computer-Aided Dispatch/Records Management Systems (CAD/RMS) include property and evidence management modules. These systems use barcode labels to make tracking and auditing easier and allow oversight and auditing by people outside the property and evidence unit. This approach makes verification more efficient and supports documentation of the chain of custody. Each item should be trackable from entry to final disposition, including every point of contact while in the agency’s custody.
Integrity is a key trait for every law enforcement agency. Any breach of trust can cause the public to lose confidence in law enforcement as a whole. Although we can never prevent someone from lacking integrity, when it comes to property and evidence management, agencies can implement oversight and safeguards to reduce problems and unwanted outcomes. These best practices strengthen prosecutions, reduce inefficiency and protect staff from false allegations.
One of the best practices within an administrator’s control is to conduct an audit of the property and evidence process. This ensures the agency, its staff and its leadership are set up for success. Make sure you can answer the question, “Can I account for all of the items in the property and evidence system?” and that you can share that answer with the community you serve.
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Training discussion points
- How often should agencies conduct full evidence audits, and who should oversee them?
- What separation-of-duty safeguards are most practical for small departments?
- How can administrators balance transparency with security when reporting audit results?
- What role does technology play in ensuring ongoing accountability and efficiency?
Tactical takeaway
Schedule an independent audit this quarter and verify that no single employee controls the entire evidence process. Accountability starts with inspection and shared oversight.
What steps has your agency taken to ensure accountability and transparency in its property and evidence system?
About the author
Cam Coppess served 30 years in municipal law enforcement. Most of those years were with the West Des Moines (Iowa) Police Department. During his tenure he served as a patrol officer, investigator, supervisor and command officer, and interim chief of a neighboring department. He was involved in various projects, but the one that provides his knowledge base in technology was the team project to build an Information System for the police department. This led to transitioning the department from paper reports to electronic (digital) reporting. During this project he gained experience of how to review and audit the important processes of a law enforcement agency. As a command officer he had oversight to criminal investigations, police records and technology.
Cam has also served the Commission on Accreditation for Law Enforcement Agencies as an Assessor. This allowed him to observe how various law enforcement agencies met or exceeded the standards and best practices to protect the integrity of their Property/Evidence Management obligation.
Cam is a graduate of the FBI National Academy and has earned a Master of Public Administration from Drake University. He is currently working as a consultant in Public Safety with Edgar Public Safety and Healthcare Solutions, LLC.
