Part 1:  Why Evidence Problems Keep Appearing in Otherwise Well-Run Police Departments

How operational drift quietly erodes evidentiary integrity

Contributed by Jim Brigham, LCG VP of Risk Management, Former Operations Chief, State of Vermont, Office of Safety and Security

Series context. This article is the first in When Evidence Systems Break: Lessons from Independent Police Evidence Audits. The series examines why evidence management failures recur across competent law enforcement agencies and how leadership can recognize and address them as operational risk events before they escalate. [1]

Evidence Failures Are Operational Risk Events, Not Moral Failures

Evidence room failures are rarely about bad cops. They are almost always about systems that quietly drift until they break.

Independent reviews, judicial findings, and federal guidance consistently show that evidence integrity issues most often arise from gradual misalignment across policy, practice, staffing, and scale rather than from intentional misconduct. These conditions closely mirror operational risk patterns that have long been documented in public-sector governance and safety-critical industries. [2][3]

From a risk management perspective, evidence failures behave like other operational risk events. They develop incrementally, normalize over time, and remain latent until litigation, prosecutorial scrutiny, leadership transitions, or external reviews test them. Treating these failures as scandals rather than system signals delays correction and amplifies downstream legal, reputational, and operational exposure. [4]

LCG perspective. Evidence integrity risk increases when systems evolve faster than governance, not when leadership acknowledges a problem.

Why Otherwise Strong Departments Are Not Immune

A persistent misconception is that evidence failures occur only in poorly managed or under-resourced departments. In practice, evidence integrity issues frequently surface in accredited, professionally staffed, and operationally mature agencies. [5][6]

Evidence systems operate at the intersection of operations, compliance, technology, and law. When one element changes without corresponding governance updates, risk accumulates quietly. Accreditation and written policy alone cannot prevent this form of operational drift. [7]

Leadership Turnover and Institutional Memory Loss

Evidence systems are long-lived. Leadership tenures often are not.

Command transitions can unintentionally weaken evidence governance when historical workarounds, undocumented practices, or deferred remediation plans are inherited without context. Reliance on prior inspections or accreditation status may obscure evolving risk conditions, particularly when reviews focus on policy compliance rather than operational execution. [8]

Over time, the absence of periodic independent validation allows minor inconsistencies to persist unchecked.

Legacy Evidence Rooms Under Modern Caseloads

Many evidence rooms were designed decades ago for lower volumes, fewer evidence types, and minimal digital integration. Modern policing generates substantially more physical and digital evidence, along with increased expectations for environmental controls, documentation, and chain-of-custody precision. [9]

When facilities and staffing models do not scale accordingly, personnel adapt informally. Temporary solutions harden into permanent practices, incrementally weakening evidentiary integrity without triggering immediate failure.

Policies Written for Compliance, Not Practice

Evidence policies are often comprehensive and aligned with recognized standards. Risk emerges when those policies describe idealized workflows that no longer reflect operational reality. [10]

As workloads increase, staff develop practical adaptations to meet demand. When these adaptations are undocumented or inconsistently applied, leadership visibility erodes. Compliance exists on paper while operational integrity drifts in practice.

Long Gaps Without Independent Validation

Internal inspections and supervisory reviews are essential but structurally limited. Reviewers often assess systems they helped design and operate within constrained scopes, and they lack external benchmarks for comparison. [11]

When years pass without independent evidence audits, the absence of reported problems is often misinterpreted as the absence of risk.

Technology Adoption Without Integrity Assurance

Evidence technology does not automatically produce evidence integrity.

Digital evidence systems introduce efficiencies but also introduce new risk vectors related to metadata integrity, access controls, retention logic, and system integration. Without independent integrity testing and governance oversight, technology can shift risk rather than mitigate it. [12][13]

Early Risk Signals Leadership Often Misses

Evidence failures rarely appear suddenly. Early indicators include minor documentation discrepancies, informal storage practices, inconsistent supervisory verification, and unresolved exceptions that are repeatedly deferred. [14]

Because these issues do not immediately compromise prosecutions, they are often deprioritized. In hindsight, they frequently represent the earliest warning signs of broader system drift.

Credibility Erodes Before Compliance Fails

In many cases, evidentiary credibility erodes before formal noncompliance is identified.

Prosecutorial questions increase. Defense challenges intensify. Courts request additional documentation. These signals often precede formal findings and indicate rising scrutiny rather than failure. [15]

When leadership first encounters evidence issues under external pressure, response options narrow and narrative control weakens.

Independent Perspective Changes the Risk Equation

Independent evidence audits are often initiated only after internal reviews stall or external concerns arise. While understandable, this timing increases exposure.

Earlier independent review allows leadership to assess evidence integrity objectively, identify system-level vulnerabilities, and develop remediation plans that are operationally realistic and legally defensible. Independence does not imply adversarial posture. It enables benchmarked, system-focused assessment without presumption of fault. [16]

Final Thought

The most significant risk in evidence management is not discovering a problem. It is discovering it too late.

Evidence systems drift. Early recognition preserves leadership control, credibility, and remediation options. Ignoring drift transforms manageable operational risk into institutional exposure.

The next article in this series examines what independent reviewers actually observe during evidence audits and why internal reviews, despite good intentions, often miss cumulative risk.

References (endnotes)

[1] LCG Discovery, organizational overview and governance resources: https://www.lcgdiscovery.com/ (NOT VALID)

[2] ISO, ISO 31000: Risk management – Guidelines (overview):
https://www.bsigroup.com/en-US/products-and-services/standards/iso-31000-risk-management-guidelines/

[3] COSO, Internal Control – Integrated Framework (Executive Summary, PDF):
https://www.sechistorical.org/collection/papers/2010/2013_0501_COSOInternal.pdf

[4] Reason, James, Managing the Risks of Organizational Accidents, Routledge:
https://www.routledge.com/Managing-the-Risks-of-Organizational-Accidents/Reason/p/book/9781840141054

[[5] Evidence management/property room operations (law enforcement) – POST Guide (PDF):
https://post.ca.gov/Portals/0/post_docs/publications/Evidence_and_Property_Management.pdf

[6] DOJ/OJP evidence handling guidance (digital evidence) – GovInfo preservation copy (PDF):
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GOVPUB-J28-PURL-LPS49755/pdf/GOVPUB-J28-PURL-LPS49755.pdf

[7] CALEA standards titles list (official CALEA PDF):
https://www.calea.org/sites/default/files/CALEA%20LE%20Stds%20with%20Tiered%20Designation.pdf

[8] U.S. Government Accountability Office, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government (Green Book):
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-14-704g

[9] Best practices for evidence storage/preservation – NIST IR 7928 (PDF):
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2013/NIST.IR.7928.pdf (NIST Publications)

[10] The Sedona Conference – Evidence management / ESI evidence & admissibility (PDF):
https://thesedonaconference.org/sites/default/files/publications/2_ESI_Evidence_and_Admissibility_0.pdf (The Sedona Conference)

[11] GAO, limitations of self-assessment and internal controls:
https://www.gao.gov/greenbook

[12] NIJ, Digital Evidence Policies and Procedures Manual:
https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/254661.pdf

[13] NIST, SP 800-53 Rev. 5 – Security and Privacy Controls:
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-53r5.pdf

[14] Property & Evidence Control – IACP (direct PDF, no login):
https://www.theiacp.org/sites/default/files/2021-03/Evidence%20Control%20Formatted%2003.03.2021.pdf (IACP)

[15] Federal Rules of Evidence, Rule 901 (Authentication):
https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/fre/rule_901

[16] U.S. Department of the Interior – 446 DM 7 Evidence Management (PDF):
https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/elips/documents/446-dm-7.pdf (U.S. Department of the Interior)

This article is for general information and does not constitute legal advice.