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Police to get new evidence tracking system

By Rachel Lippmann

St. Louis – The St. Louis Board of Police Commissioners has authorized the department to purchase a new software system designed to help officers keep better track of evidence collected during investigations.

The new system was the top recommendation of an outside auditor who reviewed the department's property custody department after thousands of dollars in cash went missing from an evidence locker in 2007.

The current system was modified from one designed to handle lab reports, said department spokeswoman Erica Van Ross.

"It's like needing Excel and using Word," she said. "We needed it perhaps to pop up a schedule of audits so we could make sure things were where they belonged. It wasn't able to do that. We needed something that we could pull up a piece of evidence and we could track every place that it's been, every hand that it's touched. It wasn't able to do that."

The department will use $200,000 from the asset forfeiture fund to pay for the new system. Its IT department will be in charge of maintenance

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