“Most evidence either makes or breaks every case,” said Mitch Pilkington, Layton’s CSI supervisor.

Collecting evidence, storing it, and managing it for retrieval or disposal is a critical part of police work, a requirement the Layton Police Department has moved to bolder with a rare national accreditation.

The department’s Crime Scene Investigation team recently attained accreditation by the International Association of Property and Evidence, a non-profit organization created by law enforcement professionals to help establish recommended standards for property and evidence departments.

Pilkington said after months of training and redoing how his division collects, stores, and keeps track of evidence, they invited an official from IAPE to audit their work.

“It’s like inviting someone in your home to look under your couch for dirt,” Pilkington said.

The audit took most of a week and the auditor looked at cases dating back to 2006. IAPE accredited and certified Layton’s CSI team in January. Layton’s team is the first in Utah and the fifth in the nation to receive that accreditation and certification, Pilkington said. 

• RELATED: CSI: Davis standardizing how investigators process clues

The decision to take on the accreditation challenge came after Shanea Perez, a CSI investigator, said she had taken some classes with IAPE when she was an evidence technician and realized how important the information was. 

Occasionally, Layton is called to assist in another city’s case, like on Friday, Feb. 19, in Ogden during the investigation of a police-involved shooting where a man died from a gunshot wound and a woman was taken to a local hospital with multiple stab wounds, Pilkington said.

Also, it not uncommon for Layton’s CSI team to request help, like it did when Utah Highway Patrol Sgt. Paul Kotter was shot in Layton in August 2015. Weber County Sheriff’s Office sent its CSI team to assist in the investigation. 

Pilkington said the biggest challenge his office is facing is how to store all the evidence officers collect. The average amount of evidence collected each month is about 355 pieces. In months that have a murder or rape case, the evidence collected can be as high as 600 pieces. 

They are also in charge of any items that are reported stolen and recovered, as well as keeping items that a resident has found and turned into the police department, Pilkington said.

In 2015, his office was able to dispose of 6,000 items of evidence, but ongoing volume continues to grow, increasing demand for storage. Many of the cases of evidence they currently are storing have to be held for long periods due to the length of time a case is in court as well as any appeals that may be made. 

Story continues below photo. 

Officers are bringing in 16 percent more evidence every year, so the police department plans to request the CSI unit be moved to another building with more space.

No unauthorized person, including the police chief, is allowed in the locked evidence room. Whitney Berg, evidence technician, said inside the room is another locked room where drugs, money and guns are stored. Drugs and money that are confiscated at a crime scene are locked in filing cabinets. 

Pilkington said the extra precautions taken on guns, drugs and money are needed because those three items seem to be the ones that end up missing across the nation.

“If we can’t find a piece of evidence, then the administration has to know about it, the attorneys have to know about it and then the media knows about it, and we really don’t want to be there,” he said.

Any officer who wants to review evidence has to sign out for it, their name is logged in the police station’s computer program and also into a program called “Tickle,” which reminds Berg and Perez to check where that evidence is if it not returned in a reasonable amount of time, they said.

You can reach reporterLoretta Park at lpark@standard.net or at 801-625-4252. Follow her on Twitter@LorettaParkSE or like her on Facebook.