Evidence Control

Evidence Control and Administrative Services is supervised by Deborah Burwell.

This section receives, tracks, and returns evidence submitted to the Crime Laboratory by law enforcement agencies from all one hundred counties across the state. Data of the evidence submitted to the laboratory is entered into the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) to initiate the tracking of evidence and to generate the beginning of lab reports. The evidence is transferred to the technicians to maintain control and custody. Items of evidence are tracked by LIMS throughout the laboratory as analyses are completed and returned to the technicians for external transfer to the respective law enforcement agencies. Technicians routinely testify to the chain of custody in criminal proceedings.

The Administrative Services Unit has the responsibility for laboratory report dissemination and case file preparation, tracking, maintenance and archiving. Approximately 35,000 submissions were received during the past year with an expected increase to 40,000 submissions predicted for this calendar year.