PC Bloggs Investigates... Crime Property.

It is commonly known that if you can keep on top of your Paperwork, the only other thing that will get you into trouble in the police is Property. (It used to be Paperwork, Property and Policewomen, but in the Twenty-First Century police officers no longer have sex with each other so I have scrapped that one.)

When someone is arrested for anything involving an object with a corporeal presence, that corporeal presence will, likely as not, end up in the police Property Store. This is a dark dungeon located in the basement or a Portakabin, with aisles, shelves, racks and drawers stuffed full of drugs, weapons, clothing, mobile phones and random articles seized by Scenes of Crime examiners. With all this vital evidence stashed in one place, the opportunities for loss and destruction are numerous.

In Blandshire Constabulary, a foolproof system has been developed to tackle this potential disaster. Every item that goes into the store is labelled with a unique title and reference number and the label is signed by the officer who has seized it. The same title is then transferred onto another label with another completely unique reference number. The item and both labels are put into a bag and sealed by a seal marked with yet another totally utterly unique and individual reference number. A carbon copy of one of the labels is kept by the officer so they can locate the item again and another copy is kept by the Property Manager so that he can locate it again.

The sealed, bagged, triply-tagged exhibit is then chucked in a small cupboard where it sits in a pile of other similarly bagged items until the Property Manager stows it away in the dungeon. The smaller pieces are quite happy to drop down behind the shelving unit and store themselves forever in the temporary cupboard. The rest will stay in the dungeon until the case is over, by which time the officer who put it there has left the force or forgotten of its existence.

Believe it or not, in spite of this remarkable system, property can and does wander off. More often than not the stray items can be found in someone’s docket, or kit bag, or locker. Occasionally the exhibit will turn up in a panda car boot, or travel home in someone’s stab vest by accident. If not found in any of these places, there is a high chance that the officer seized it immediately before rushing to another incident and the exhibit got out there. If the item is located in the store, it will probably have been stashed underneath something a lot heavier, or will have been chemically treated, left in a damp spot or been dropped by the Expert examining it, and will therefore emerge damaged beyond repair.

Either way, if anything you own ever falls into the hands of the police through your fault or another’s, do not expect to see it again. It is for this reason that I advise people who are being harassed to just change their number and forget about it, because if you hand us your mobile phone for analysis you may as well just buy a new one.

Oddly, there are Members of Public who will not accept this fact and actually expect their personal items returned to them when the police no longer need them.

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