CHALLENGER INSIGHTS Vol. 3:
Why You Should Focus on Crime Lab Storage
As far as niches within the Public Safety market go, Spacesaver is no stranger to creating solutions for crime labs. We’ve written case studies about how our high-density mobile storage solutions and weapons racks have solved the storage challenges of two agencies—one in the Northeast and one in the Chicago area—and there are several more that we’ve worked with across the United States.
However, there’s a new reason to take a look at these agencies. Through the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative (SAKI), the U.S. Department of Justice has formed a partnership with the New York District Attorney’s Office to expand the number of site receiving funding to address what’s become a huge issue at agencies around the country—the huge backlog of untested sexual assault kits.
A few weeks ago, this partnership announced that they will provide over $79 million to 43 agencies in 27 states to provide resources to test approximately 70,000 previously untested sexual assault kits.
This announcement represents a huge opportunity for Spacesaver products. To give this some context, two of the states that received funding, Oregon and Michigan, have 5,000 and 3,600 untested kits being stored in evidence rooms, respectively—and both states say that number is a rough estimate. Whether a sexual assault kit is in an evidence room, waiting to be shipped out to the crime lab or if it’s in the crime lab, waiting to be tested, the challenge is the same—storing these kits in a compact way AND in a way that won’t compromise the evidence. In fact, many of the agencies that have processed their backlog of kits have found that the DNA evidence inside had deteriorated due to improper storage.
Providing a dense, safe place to store sexual assault kits are just one piece of how we can offer solutions to crime labs.
Crime Lab Storage Applications:
- In-Process Evidence Testing Lockers
At Colorado’s Jefferson County Crime Lab, evidence is checked into a storage room, and a request is made to a Forensic Examiners to pick up the evidence for testing. Many times, evidence going through testing won’t be complete when a technician is ready to leave for the day. To aid with this issue, modified FreeStyle lockers were created and installed for each technician to ensure in-process evidence had an appropriate place. - Weapons Library Storage
A weapons library serves as a hand-on reference catalog–literally–for weapons. For crime labs, it’s a way to study and test firearms to support investigations–and by maintaining a working library of virtually every handgun and rifle historically available, examiners are able to identify what weapons might have been used in criminal acts.In the case of the Illinois Metro Crime Lab, Curt Rogers from Bradford Systems saw that it was important for lab technicians to be able to configure the storage based on the types of weapons that were being stored at a given time, so to compact the storage into a smaller footprint while making it fully configurable, high-density mobile shelving was paired with WeaponsWRX. The FBI’s Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia utilized weapons and pistol racks on high-density mobile. If you haven’t seen the video of the FBI Lab, it’s worth a look—our systems are featured prominently! - Long-Term Evidence Storage
Crime labs are very similar to the evidence rooms of a police department. The amount of evidence keeps increasing, the space in which to store that evidence isn’t getting any bigger, and a majority of DNA/biological storage needs to be kept indefinitely, there’s minimal chances to purge. And, because the lab is cycling through evidence constantly—sending it out, taking items in—any storage solution needs to ensure pieces are easy to find. There’s also a space concern with temperature-controlled storage for certain types of evidence–it’s costly to build or add on to refrigerated storage. There is no shortage of high-density mobile storage solutions for this audience, from a Wheelhouse solution that is cost-effective and can be moved if needed, to an ActivRAC Stainless Steel solution for the evidence that needs to be refrigerated.
Have you had success with crime lab storage? Are there other applications that you’ve identified? Email McKenna at mdustman@spacesaver.com to share your insights.