Question of the Month???  

Ask Joe  

Q Dear Joe,     

Sincerely,

Darron 

A Dear What Do I DO?

Darron... The answer is yes...to all - No one does the same as we have learned in all of our classes. Some thoughts.  

I think the best way is to first determine if your state has any retention statutes related to crime / incident reports that you may have to follow. If so then you need to make sure you're keeping the reports the appropriate amount of time as related state statute. Your records manager may have this information or the court clerk.

In the city that I retired from the City Council in concert with state law, passed a resolution annually that that required all city departments to purge certain reports, forms, logs, etc, after a specified time. The resolution covered all records that a city department may generate.

Within the Police Department that included every form that was used which included crime reports, photographs, fingerprint lifts, evidence paperwork, traffic citations, radio logs, cash receipts, and the list goes on and on.

Interesting Note - the retention times for most misdemeanor crimes in my state was (1) one year and felonies were generally much longer, 3 - 12 years. Historically, the City Council had passed records destruction resolutions allowing misdemeanor reports to be purged after five years, as long as there were no outstanding warrants.  

The same resolution had misdemeanor photographs being retained 6 years, fingerprints 5 years and evidence reports 10 years. Having different times frames for various forms and other materials on the same misdemeanor case made no sense to me.  

After bringing the inconsistencies to the forefront, the City later linked the retention times of the reports and any other related forms, reports, photos, etc. to the same retention schedule. In other words, all of the related forms and photo were eligible to be destroyed at the same time.  

The same goes for felonies with longer retention dates, but some one has to research if the case is still active so as not to toss something prematurely.  

So to answer your question! I would move the closed property paperwork to a "closed drawer", or file with the original report and identify a time when the reports can be legally purged. When the report is purged the evidence paperwork is part of that destruction.

Hope that helps!  

Joe  

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