Award Information
Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2017, $6,130)
The Lake Mary Police Departments current evidence tracking system is not sufficient to allow the department to inventory, track, and report untested and unsubmitted sexual assault kits (SAKs).
The current system has reached its life cycle replacement period, and the program was not specifically developed to track evidence in a law enforcement domain. It helps businesses manage financials, supply chain, and production planning. The system has been experiencing system failures and has been producing false data causing our evidence specialist to manually inventory and physically search for pieces of evidence.
Over the years, the Lake Mary Police Department has seen an increase in incoming evidence. In 2015, the Department received 2,610 pieces of evidence. Since 2015, the agency has received 3,181 pieces - a 22 percent increase - making the incoming evidence total of 11,896 pieces of evidence and approximately .15 percent of those pieces of evidence are high-liability items (1,786 total). SAKs make up .1 percent of total evidence received. Two out of nine SAKs were never submitted for testing. The department has one evidence custodian responsible for the receipt, transport, and manual inventory/ purging of property/evidence.
In addition to property/evidence duties, the evidence custodian is responsible for State Attorneys requests, body camera video/dash camera video requests, and research of dispositions of cases taking up to three-to-four hours of her time.
ca/ncf