The Grants Pass Police Department had news to celebrate from this year’s statewide property and evidence conference. Chelsea Newman, one of two specialists who manage thousands of items for the department each year, received the Oregon Association for Property/Evidence Officers’ Outstanding Achievement Award.
Newman’s colleague Jack Hosford-Cook and Grants Pass Police Lt. Mike Vorberg were there when the association presented the award. In announcing the honor, the department highlighted another recent achievement for the team. An outside audit of the city’s evidence facility found that the Grants Pass program could serve as a model for other Oregon agencies. The department credited Newman with leading the work behind that finding.
Newman and Hosford-Cook are responsible for property that comes into police custody under widely different circumstances. Their work includes evidence collected in major criminal cases, some of which may need to be retrieved long after the initial investigation. They also hold found property for safekeeping, a service that can bring someone to the police department for the straightforward purpose of getting a lost possession back.
For evidence, keeping track of an item means accounting for more than where it is stored. The record of who handled it and when, known as the chain of custody, allows investigators, attorneys and courts to trace its handling after collection. An officer’s work at a scene may be over in a matter of hours, but the department can remain responsible for the evidence through later stages of an investigation and any court proceedings that follow.
Found property presents a different set of questions. Someone who turns in an item may know where it was found but have no idea who owns it. The person looking for it may be able to describe it without knowing whether anyone turned it in. A record of what came into custody helps staff connect those two pieces of information and determine whether the property can be returned.
The department said Newman and Hosford-Cook made established property and evidence practices the basis of the Grants Pass program. At a facility that takes in property throughout the year, those practices have to work for routine intake as well as for an item that may sit in storage before someone needs it again. Staff must be able to identify the item, locate it and account for what happened to it while it was in the department’s care.
The outside audit focused on how Grants Pass manages that responsibility across its evidence program. Its finding gives other agencies in Oregon a local department to look to as they evaluate their own practices. The award presented at the conference put the attention on Newman and the role the department says she played in getting the program to that point.
For most people in Grants Pass, contact with the department begins with a call, a report or a conversation with an officer. The property specialists often take over after that encounter ends. Whether the next step is producing evidence for a case or returning an item to its owner, it depends on the work Newman and Hosford-Cook do each day to keep track of what the department has been entrusted to hold.