Fastest Input!

One customer converted 50k items into Evidence Tracker and performed a complete inventory within 6 months.


Fact	An average of 3% of all evidence items collected by law enforcement are actively used to prosecute cases. The remaining 97% require much time and effort for disposal. Because of limited manpower there is a constant increase of property retained each period causing a compounded rate of growth.
Example	The loan on your home demonstrates compounded growth. Most know the difference 1% interest can cost after 30 years of house payments. The average evidence room has a 35% compounded yearly growth rate that causes it to quadruple every 5 years.
Danger	These growing evidence numbers require constant upgrading of shelf space and personnel. Besides these added growth expenses, the real danger lies in the increased chance of your valuable 3% being misplaced. You have seen the potential danger of mishandled evidence in the O.J. Simpson trial.
Hours	It is clear that most evidence rooms require more hours of attention than are available. Most evidence people spend an inordinate amount of time chasing critical last minute issues and don't have the time to research evidence that might be disposed. This "real life" fact further aggravates the compounded growth in the number of items retained. Some think of this situation as a leaky boat that has more water coming in than your bucket will bail. Evidence Tracker provides you with a bigger bucket!
Objective	Evidence Tracker provides a method to lower this retained growth rate. Our management strategy provides a simple workable method to accomplish your goals.

System Design

Automatic Disposal Letters

In tennis the only way to win is to keep the ball in the "other guy's" court. Similarly, with evidence the best management strategy is to insist that responsible officers periodically justify why their evidence must be kept. Similar dialogs should also be maintained with property owners and the courts. Customized disposal query letters are automatically generated by E.T. Next to each evidence item in the letter is a response box for the officer to provide instructions about this item. E.T. remembers when the letter was sent and monitors how many days it takes for a response. If a response is not made in the required time you will know to pursue other strategies such as a more severe letter, auction, department use or immediate disposal. This use of customized letters to officers, owners and the courts allows you to encourage others to share the responsibility of examining what evidence need be kept.

Save Pictures of Disposed Evidence

We allow you to save pictures of items that should be disposed such as shoplifting cases, alcohol and environmentally unsound materials. Pictures and documents can be scanned in using a variety of methods and hardware. Authorized users have full editing technology to more effectively display photos and documents necessary for prosecution.

Minimize Entry Time

E.T. dramatically decreases data entry time by skillfully using the Pocket PC barcode reader. You will see in the following sections how most entries are quickly scanned responses and descriptions are entered by scanning words or phrases that are printed as barcodes. These common descriptions, words or phrases are easily printed on any bubblejet or laser printer.

System Operation

Barcode Concept

The E.T. barcode label is a high quality sequentially manufactured product used to track your evidence. Think of this label in the same way as license plates are used to track vehicles in your state. When an item of evidence is entered into property it is assigned a highly durable, indelible alpha/numeric barcode that follows its movements and locations for life. The Pocket PC barcode reader quickly and accurately reads any developments for an item, either in the field, crime lab, or in the darkest reaches of the evidence room.

Tracking Chain-of-Custody

E.T. tracks the property when it leaves and returns to the property room. When an item moves to or from the property room, the Pocket PC is used to record where the item is going (e.g. to crime lab, court), the identity of the people issuing and receiving the item, and the date/time. When issuing multiple items to the same person the scanner remembers all previous entries. This memory insulates you from repetitive entry. This is a great timesaver!

The signature log saves you the time of retrieving and re-filing property reports. The central signature log maintains chain-of-custody signatures in date/time sequence. This log is maintained in a binder and has three columns to hold date, barcode and signature.

System Reports

Case/Item/Transaction Report

This report shows all of the items and chain of custody transactions for each item in a case. This report is used when officers go to court to testify about evidence. All information is date/time stamped on this report so the officer can provide exact testimony.

Find Anything Report

This report allows you to use every field in the database for selecting which items show up on your report. Any combination of fields can be used to perform an exact search. This report is sometimes called the "needle in the haystack" report because it allows you to find the most remote answer to your question. As an example if you used "Beretta" as your search, every item of evidence that has this word somewhere in the description will show up. This is a great aid for finding items that have been booked-in under the wrong case number.

Officer Disposal Reports

This report is the "backbone" of our management strategy for disposal of unneeded evidence. Letters are grouped by officer and case number to describe evidence items that have been retained for a period of time without any feedback or activity. Every time you include an item in a "Come and Get It" report to an owner or a "Are You Sure We Need To Keep This Evidence?" report to an officer, the system automatically creates a reminder file constantly counting how many days it takes for a response.

Location and Space Management

E.T. automatically tracks locations of items within the property room. To record the location of an item, the property clerk scans the barcoded shelf identifier and then scans the barcode label attached to each item that is being put away. There is no repetitive entry for each item being put away on the same shelf. With this ease of use in recording changes of location you can now make much more efficient use of space. Items do not have to be stored in chronological order, (such as in case number order), but can be put where they best fit! You no longer need to worry about moving an item because that's what the property report says is "THE LOCATION". In the old days to change location you would have to retrieve the original property report and write over the location field. Now you can easily re-arrange evidence items for best fit in your available shelving space. Our customers always find it popular to put all the long guns, handguns and narcotics where shelf space is customized for their fit. When you wish to retrieve an item, E.T. will tell you exactly where to find it and the date/time it was last audited.

Periodically you will use this location ability to perform total physical inventories, or specific checks based on evidence type. For example, most departments will inventory their guns, drugs and money far more frequently than other items. This is accomplished by scanning a shelf, followed by all the items on that shelf. You will repeat this process shelf after shelf for a timely inventory. You can see by the explanation above that even if items were misplaced they would be relocated while you perform your inventory checks. The items not found will be printed off in an exception report.

E.T. also streamlines preparing for property disposal. When it is time for an auction, you will print off the list of all "Flag Auction" items in location order. This affords a much faster way to retrieve evidence.

Management Graphs

Management graphs are provided describing the relationship between cases and items coming in each month and the number of items being disposed, (auctioned, returned to owner, destroyed, etc). These statistics display "growth rate" which allows objective rewarding of evidence personnel and future planning for personnel and space requirements.

Common Features

Code Strategy

All I.T. systems are designed to be "soft" software. In other words each user is able to define exactly what information they wish to capture by declaring the "codes" (or questions) that will be asked during data entry. The scanner allows you to scan the appropriate response (from a barcoded template you print).

Create/Scan Nouns

Our systems allow you to quickly and easily print Code39 barcodes on any laser or bubblejet printer supported by Windows 98/2000/XP. These are wonderfully clear and will be used for all data entry tasks including name tags and shelf locations. You can see in the picture that many nouns can be scanned to create one long description. Pocket PC entries can be any combination of scanned or hand-typed entries.

Pocket PC Features

For those wishing to have wireless communications we offer our PocketPC with Mobile Windows 6.0.

Maintain Pictures and Documents

Now you can use all popular digital cameras and flatbed scanners to save images of your inventory. Complete editing facilities allow you to accentuate these graphic resources for more effective presentation. You now have the ability to scan and maintain original source documents. Multi-page .tiff documents can be scanned using any Twain compliant flatbed scanner. There are no limits to the number of documents stored for each item.

Unlimited digital photos for each item are maintained. As with documents these can be stored and accessed from a secure server whereas manipulation of the original source is impossible.

Custom Report Layouts

When you download the demo from our website you will see that each report is the "soup to nuts" variety that shows every field of information. The 'System Setup' under the main 'File" selection allows each user on a network to decide exactly which fields will show up on their reports. This is a great aid when management is looking for concise answers or to withhold secure information.

Custom SQL Reports

When you wish to print out enterprise level reports that include information from systems other than Asset Tracker we offer a comprehensive ad-hoc report generator. Now you can combine information from Asset Tracker as well as any other SQL, Dbase, Access or ASCII file based system. This tool allows you to integrate Asset Tracker with other management systems.

Documentation

Our manuals are written through the eyes of the end user. Whenever possible pictures and examples are used to guide the user through their daily tasks. There is a "Hands on Training" section that allows the new user to practice their skills in a "Training" database to gain confidence before "going live". We have written the manuals in a "layered" fashion so that the new user can quickly find the key concepts and how they are used. There are special technical sections for management and network administrators.

Company History

Inventory Trackers installed the first barcode based evidence system in 1986. Since then we have worked with over 600 customers to focus on the tactical and strategic issues facing the law enforcement professional today. We have fashioned ourselves as a complete provider of all inventory systems for law enforcement. We feel that inventory, and especially evidence is the last "black hole" in the law enforcement business and we are pledged to practically and affordably guide our customers into the next millennium.