Jacksonville’s Police Department facilities face many problems – crowded work spaces, areas not up to code, plumbing problems and exposed wiring throughout the building. Last month, Jacksonville’s City Council heard a report from Architects Design Group (ADG), Inc., about the space and money needed to build a new public safety building that may include a new police department and jail.

Until then, one thing JPD may face is how it stores evidence and what is called the sanctity of custody.

“You must be able to prove in a court of law that nobody has had access to the evidence that wasn’t supposed to have access,” said Ian Reeves, ADG’s President. “If a defense attorney found out that anybody has access to it that wasn’t supposed to, it is inadmissible in court.”

Reeves gave the needs report for the potential public safety building project. In his report, he highlighted some of the red flags his team noticed while going though JPD’s evidence storages.

“There are no humidity controls,” said Reeves. “There are air born pathogens associated with marijuana and anything associated with DNA blood and there is no specialized exhaust in this or any part of the building.

“There is supposed to be isolating vaults for cash and valuables, for narcotics, for weapons, and DNA or cold case files storage. What happens is we are constantly being inundated as a police agency with unfunded legislative mandates of how long they have to hold the evidence.”

The evidence may not only be exposed to the environment and to cross contamination with other pieces of evidence, according to Reeves, it is being exposed to people who should not have access to it.

“(Jacksonville) has some of its evidence in the old fire station next door that is also utilized for storage by the facility maintenance crew,” said Reeves. “When they come to mow the yard, they open up the doors and there is evidence in there and the doors are wide open while the guys are out their mowing the yard. It’s not the most critical evidence, but…nobody is supposed to have any access to that evidence.”

The team from ADG says it noticed a squirrel had made its home in one the areas where evidence was being held.

Jacksonville’s Police Chief, Tommy Thompson, says that the evidence is secure, with sheet rock frame and a metal door.

“It’s locked up secure,” said Thompson. “Our evidence room does not meet anybody’s real standard, but it is a lot better than a lot of police departments have.”

The chief said that evidence has not been tossed out of court because of their storage method but that any potential problems would most likely come from water damage.

“It could be a possibility if…water gets in there and contaminates something,” said Thompson.

For bigger cases, Thompson says that the evidence usually stays in a crime lab, providing even more security.

“Usually the real serious stuff goes to the lab and they already do their testing on it. A lot of times they keep it until the court date or we get it back up here after the fact,” said Thompson.

With hopes of a new public safety building in the future, Thompson says he would be happy with its own air unit.

“They want you now to have a low humidity room with air conditioning and heating set at different levels…just FBI laboratory standards for evidence keeping,” said Thompson. “We won’t need something quite like that, just a new place that has its own heating and cooling.

“Our biggest thing is that we can’t get all our employees in the same place in the building at one time. If we have to have a meeting we have to have it away from the police department.”