Sheriff’s Office Proves Chain of Custody Using Lowry’s Property Tracking System
 
The Livingston County Sheriff's Department manages, tracks, and reports every single piece of evidence using a Property Tracking System from Lowry Computer Products. Whenever there's a criminal action, felony, accident report, or domestic complaint, an incident number is assigned by the Sheriff’s Office.
Any item associated with that 'incident' is also assigned a unique evidence number. As items are received in the Evidence Room, a bar code label is affixed that indicates the incident number, year, item number, description, and other information. If items are checked out, such as for evidence in court or to run lab tests, the barcode label is scanned and the new location is recorded in the Property Tracking System.
"The learning curve is greatly reduced because of the simplicity of the system," explains Deputy Tom Dorsey, Commander of the Evidence Room. "Due to the reduction in paperwork, we haven’t received a single complaint from our officers. Plus 100% readable bar codes eliminate time that clerks previously spent deciphering hand written numbers or scribbled locations of evidence."
In exchange for testimony from a clerk regarding the whereabouts of evidence and its chain of custody, Livingston County now provides the court with copies of the reports from Lowry’s Property Tracking System. These reports show which officer submitted the evidence, when the item was logged into the system and which clerk logged it. The report also shows when evidence is moved to a new location.
"Eliminating the mishandling of evidence is extremely important in law enforcement," explains Deputy Tom Dorsey. "The burden of proving chain of custody is on the prosecution. If law enforcement can’t show where the evidence is at all times, a claim could be made that it was mishandled or tampered with. Because of the accuracy of the Property Tracking System, the court doesn’t challenge our chain of custody and we reduce the number of lost opportunities for conviction related to evidence."
When the legal process is complete, the Property Tracking System tracks whether an item was returned to the rightful owner, destroyed, or sent away to a third party. In the event that a case is re-opened, the tracking system helps identify the current whereabouts of the evidence. |
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