DUSON, La. ( KLFY ) — The Duson Police Department has a new storage facility for evidence that is more secure, has more room and is located much closer to investigators.

The new storage facility is located directly behind the police department, is double walled and equipped with a security system. The old facility was offsite, located several blocks away from the department, and did not have 24/7 monitoring on it.

Assistant Police Chief James Hodges said the department’s officers and command staff are excited about the new storage facility. He said the new facility feels much more secure than what the department was using before.

“It was primitive, really, and now we’re in a building that we feel is secure. Definitely, many levels of security on it, whether it be the double walls that we have, the security system that we have in place, or just the tracking system of the evidence. There’s nothing that comes in or out of here that we don’t track,” Hodges said.

Because the department is storing evidence going back as far as 2001, Hodges said it is essential for the department to have a storage facility, “especially one of this caliber.”

“As cases stack up with us, we are met with more and more demand to store evidence that is pertinent to crimes without that evidence, if we didn’t have somewhere to store that stuff, those cases could go by the wayside and we could never get a conviction of it,” said Hodges.

“But having this location and the storage, we’re able to keep that stuff for a really long amount of time. That way we can ensure that we get it to court and we can get the justice that we need for people,” he continued.

He adds, “When it comes to us doing our cases, seeing all those cases through and getting evidence collected for, say, a burglary, whether it be finding DNA on the scene or finding a glove or a handprint somewhere, being able to have somewhere to store that, that’s safe, it’s air controlled, all that stuff. It’s very important to preserve the integrity of that evidence.”

The building has been in use for approximately two months.

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