| Chief of Police Armand P. La Barge |
| York Regional Police |
| 17250 Yonge Street, Newmarket, Ontario, Canada L3Y 4W5 1866-8POLICE TTY 1-800-668-0398 Fax 905-853-5810 www.yrp.ca |
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THE REGIONAL MUNICIPALITY OF YORK POLICE SERVICES BOARD REPORT OF THE CHIEF OF POLICE 23 JANUARY 2008 __________________________________________ Re: Annual Property and Evidence Audit __________________________________________ RECOMMENDATION:
Section 5 of LE-020 of the Policing Standards guidelines, York Regional Police procedure and Board Policy in regards to the Collection, Preservation and Control of Evidence require that York Regional Police undertake an annual audit of all property and evidence held by our service and report the results to the Board. The York Regional Police Quality Assurance Bureau conducted a comprehensive annual audit of all property room locations in 2007. This report summarizes the findings of the annual audit and the recommendations put forth. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: Not applicable BACKGROUND: An annual audit of all property room locations was completed in 2007 in compliance with the Policing Standards Manual, Board Policy and York Regional Police Procedures. York Regional Police has 8 property room locations. These property rooms are located within each of the 5 operational districts, Drugs and Vice Enforcement Bureau, Headquarters and an off-site location at the Seized Property Management Facility. All firearms are centrally stored at our Headquarters property room. The overall efficiency and accuracy in record keeping in all of our property rooms continues to improve each year. Random samplings from all of the property locations revealed few minor clerical errors. All of the safe contents and all of the firearms were easily located and accounted for. All counterfeit currency has been transferred over to the Versadex Records Management System, is very easy to track and the backlog from previous years has been rectified. With the introduction of Versadex, the workload on the Sergeant and Property Coordinators in the Property/Evidence Management Unit has increased considerably. There has also been an increase in the volume of property being processed by the Property Coordinators. This is especially evident in 4 District which has four times the property of 3 District and one-third more property than 2 and 5 District. With the seniority of the members in the Unit, the time off has increased, which at times makes it difficult to meet the resourcing needs of the police service. On January 1, 2008, a Staff Sergeant was assigned to the Unit. The audit determined that there is still a need for an additional property coordinator to be assigned to the Unit to be deployed as needed. At this time, property is being inventoried in two records management systems, Versadex and SpeedTrack. SpeedTrack replaced our previous Records Management System and provides an inventory of all property that has come into our possession before July 17, 2005. In order to increase the efficiency and accountability within the Property/Evidence Management Unit, it has been recommended that all property records be transferred from SpeedTrack to the Versadex System. Recommendations regarding staffing, accountability and efficiency were made during the 2007 York Regional Police Quality Assurance Bureau audit. 2007 Audit Recommendations include:
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Respectfully submitted, Armand P. La Barge, Chief of Police. |