Your evidence is in the bathroom…
They have this...
Lt. Lee Mathis said that a 300 percent population boom in Erie, Colorado, over the past ten years has caused overcrowding. Ten years ago there were just over 6,000 people living in Erie and the town had only half a dozen officers. Now there are roughly 18,000 residents and 21 officers. Mathis said, at 2,300 square feet, the department is so small that crime victims sometimes encounter their attackers in the narrow hallways and cramped interview rooms.
Town of Erie spokesman Fred Diehl said that town trustees recognize that the department needs a new building, and already has a large portion of the estimated $4 million it will take to build one. But it will take years before everything is said and done. In the meantime, evidence is hung out to dry in the bathrooms, suspects walk past officer cubbies that hold police gear, and victims pass their attackers in the hallway.
They need this...
Mathis pushed open the door to the department’s only women’s restroom, which, in the absence of female officers, has been converted into a storage space. Patrol bicycles are propped against a toilet, crime scene collection equipment is shoved into a corner, and Mathis said evidence like bloody shirts is sometimes left to dry in the bathroom shower. “We don’t have anywhere to process evidence right now,” he said. “We have to process it sometimes in the ladies bathroom.”
The issue is of course that should evidence get lost, mislabelled, or contaminated, the cops will never hear the end of it. But look at their working conditions!
If we really want the police to do their jobs and to do it right we need to make sure that when a city’s population grows, the police department grows proportionally. And I don’t mean just adding cops! If the steady growth was there over the past decade, Erie should have anticipated a bigger police department.
Read it here.
Categories: Forensics, Help the Cops!
Tags: Colorado, Evidence, Forensics, Identification, Investigations Division, Police, Victim