HOUSTON POLICE ‘DOING THE SAME THINGS THEY ARREST PEOPLE FOR’ (2)

Here is Grits’ take on the chronic mishandling of seized property by the Houston Police Department:

HOUSTON PD PROPERTY ROOM FAILING AT CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

Grits For Breakfast
May 1, 2012

Grits was particularly interested to learn that only a fraction of evidence released from the property room actually makes its way back to it rightful owners. "Last year, police checked in 65,000 items and disposed of another 24,000 items, including 8,200 returned to their owners. The other items were either auctioned off, donated to charity, converted to police use, destroyed or returned to the HPD division that checked them in." Some of that is because of drug evidence destroyed, but I'll bet a more detailed investigation or audit into what happened to the rest of the evidence, particularly that which was "converted to police use ... or returned to the HPD division that checked them in," would be instructive.

It's difficult to accept the "nobody's perfect" excuse from management for such a recurring problem. This isn't a one off. When you're dealing with processes involving that much property and data (especially when it's other people's property), the system needs adequate checks and redundancies to make sure evidence isn't lost or improperly disposed of. Ask inventory trackers at Walmart, or for that matter UPS. With technologies and processes available in the 21st century, the only reason these systems aren't more professionalized is that management and budget writers haven't prioritized their upgrade.

Too often police property rooms are an employment backwater within law enforcement agencies, frequently a place where officers are assigned when they have disciplinary problems or have been deemed unfit for field duty. (Charley Wilkinson of CLEAT boasts that many police union locals have been organized by disgruntled employees assigned to the property room as punishment.) I've no knowledge of specific staffing patterns at HPD, but frequently professionalism in this area is diminished by the (often accurate) perception among officers and management that property room duty amounts to second-class status, contributing to sloppy evidence retention practices. Grits would prefer to see property rooms run by dedicated, civilian professionals instead of sworn officers. Managing inventory is something big companies do all the time with far lower error rates and superior customer satisfaction.