Why Your Department Needs to Invest in an Evidence Tracking Software

Police departments often handle more inventory than they can keep or manage. According to a survey conducted by the International Association of Property and Evidence, over half of the 1,000 respondents reported a 75 percent and above capacity in their warehouses, while almost 70 percent were accommodating 40 to 80 percent more items per year than they can remove.

What’s more, police departments situated in medium-sized urban areas take in around 600 items per month, and the full disposition review process that entails finding the item, contacting the owner, looking up the case, obtaining approval, and disposition take a minimum of 30 minutes. Given that each year only contains a little over 2,000 work hours, two full-time staff members are needed to process 7,200 items. It also means that these same staff members have no other tasks other than to manage inventory to make sure that it doesn’t increase. For cities of considerable size, reviewing and storing evidence alone necessitates the manpower of an entire evidence staff.

Because of this issue, there is a need for a streamlined inventory process for evidence tracking. Thousands of police agencies find it challenging to handle, often due to insufficient training, rotating personnel, low priority from administrators, and inadequate tracking methods. However, managing evidence is one of law enforcement’s most critical tasks, so it’s all the more important to prioritize the improvement of tackling inventory.

• Ideally, you should be able to answer these questions at all times:

• How many items do we have stored in my evidence room or warehouse right now?

• What’s the total amount of currency stored in our property room at the moment?

• Have we conducted and completed an inventory in the past 12 months?

• Can we review a log that details the activity of evidence from recovery to disposal?

• How many items do we have due for disposal right now?

• How many items have we disposed of this year?

If you cannot supply an answer to all these questions, it may be a sign that you need to turn to automated evidence management. Doing so will help your team and the warehouse personnel to know where certain evidence is and why.

This is where the PMI Evidence Tracker™ comes in. Designed by Cops for Cops, it’s a powerful evidence management solution that offers law enforcement agencies with an affordable, flexible, and easy-to-use tool for handling and managing evidence and property. It keeps detailed information about each piece of evidence, so you won’t have to deal with paperwork all the time.

This system also boasts all the bells and whistles you would need in an evidence management software. It includes tools to manage both evidence and assets, a barcode printer, barcode scanner, labels, ribbons, and a year of support that includes free software updates, so your systems stay up to date. It also allows user customization of the evidence log and reports.

Other nifty features include unparalleled help and support, single-screen evidence entry, unlimited user accounts with customizable permissions, batch check-in and check out, faster data entry, evidence barcoding, pictures and attachments, activity log, and asset tracking.

If you want to know more about why your department would benefit from investing in evidence management software like PMI Evidence Tracker™, contact us to see how we can help.