After a police dispatcher in Alabama was found dead at work from a suspected drug overdose, the State Bureau of Investigation was called to investigate. An audit of the Hanceville Police Department’s evidence room found missing drugs (including oxycodone and cocaine), a missing handgun and about 30 undocumented firearms. The fallout was serious: A grand jury indicted four officers and the police chief on a variety of charges that included accusations of mishandling and unauthorized removal of evidence from the department’s evidence room. The department was disbanded and law enforcement duties were taken over by the county sheriff’s office.
In another state, an internal inventory of property and evidence facilities at Buncombe County Sheriff’s Office in North Carolina revealed more than 1,700 missing or damaged items, including drugs, guns and money.
While these examples seem egregious — and likely criminal — even on a small scale the mishandling or misplacement of evidence can jeopardize prosecutions and erode community trust, underscoring the need for regular audits and more effective inventory management.
According to the National Institute of Justice, “No question should ever exist at trial or a hearing that concerns missing items, mishandling or contamination of items, mislabeling of items, destruction of … or breaks in the chain of custody that might jeopardize evidence admissibility.”
For the public, trust in law enforcement is tied not only to how cases are investigated, but to whether critical evidence is handled with consistency, transparency and accountability so justice can be served.
With many departments still using pen and paper or spreadsheets to keep track of evidence and property, it’s no surprise that evidence can occasionally fall through the cracks — but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Chain of custody is where cases hold or break
“Whether the item is a firearm, narcotics, a hard drive, a sexual assault kit or trace evidence collected at a crime scene, every piece of evidence must be documented, secured and transferred according to strict chain-of-custody requirements. There are also rules about how that evidence is to be handled, secured and transferred, so there are multiple steps of accountability,” says Kerry Wicks, a senior account manager at Zebra Technologies and 16-year veteran of law enforcement.
Defense attorneys are eager to seize on any weakness in the process or misstep to sow doubt in the prosecution and undermine the integrity of evidence, potentially denying justice to victims of crime and exonerating the guilty. Police officers and detectives don’t get into the field to let perpetrators walk or build weak cases, so most are careful to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s when it comes to collecting, cataloguing and tagging evidence.
The legal obligations are clear and the standards are high — all changes of custody are required to be recorded. But the practical aspects doing of it can be challenging, especially for departments that are underresourced, for officers manually signing in evidence with paper and pen or evidence room managers keeping track on spreadsheets. Any time the evidence is moved to or from the lab or the courtroom is a chance for error and a break in the chain of custody that might jeopardize evidence admissibility.
Implementation of RFID offers law enforcement agencies a new level of accountability by providing precise, automated tracking of items from collection to courtroom.
Why RFID improves accountability
Many police departments already use barcode scanners to simplify the process of cataloguing and tracking evidence. Barcodes improve documentation at specific handoff points, but they still rely on line-of-sight scanning and manual compliance. RFID adds another layer of visibility by enabling faster reads, automated detection and broader inventory awareness without requiring each item to be scanned one by one.
Because RFID uses radio waves, tags can be read without a direct line of sight and don’t require optical scanning of each individual item, offering greater automation and speed. In many cases multiple items can be detected at once, which can be especially useful in busy property rooms, regional labs that process a huge volume of evidence or for large-scale evidence or property audits.
In 2005, a report from the NIJ described the potential of RFID systems: “RFID systems may prove more effective and efficient than barcodes for recording, locating, and tracking evidence and property. RFID smart tags are ideally suited to meeting chain-of-custody requirements. These tags can record the who, what, where, and when of each piece of evidence from a crime scene and, once the evidence is stored in a secure location, send an alarm automatically if anyone attempts to tamper with it. They can also track and record such valuable police equipment as firearms and laptop computers. RFID technology also enables the assignment of a particular piece of equipment to a specific officer.”
Today, this potential has come to fruition and RFID is a time- and resource-saving technology widely employed in many industries, including public safety. Advocates for modern evidence management say RFID can help reduce unauthorized access, improve audit speed and strengthen accountability in secure storage environments.
From tracking to audit readiness
The RFID system is comprised of hardware — tags and readers with antennas attached or embedded — and the application software and a database where the data is stored and analyzed.
One example of how agencies are approaching this challenge combines Zebra Technologies’ RFID hardware, including mobile and fixed readers, labels and printers, with evidence-tracking software from Xemelgo.
“It’s kind of the best of both worlds,” said Wicks. “You’ve got a world-class software solution that focuses very specifically on being able to track assets and evidence, in partnership with Zebra, another world-class solution from the hardware perspective, to meet the needs of their individual agency.”
Zebra Technologies’ devices combined with Xemelgo’s RFID software enables agencies to swiftly tag and track each movement of evidence, providing the accountability and chain of custody required for strong cases in court, to return property to its owner and document other appropriate disposition when the case is closed or retention periods have expired.
“It’s literally limitless. Anything that you need to track, anything you need for accountability and anything you need to provide audit capability and inventory accountability for, we can help,” said Wicks.
Evidence management may happen behind locked doors, but its impact is highly visible. When agencies can account for every item, document every transfer and demonstrate a clear, reliable chain of custody, they strengthen more than a case. They reinforce the belief that law enforcement is serving and protecting the public with vigor and justice is served with integrity and truth.
For more information, visit Zebra.
