LADY LAKE, Fla. – It was a project two years in the making: Meticulously inventorying, cataloguing and organizing the evidence room at the Lady Lake Police Department.
When Chief Steve Hunt took over in 2023, he posted an ad for a new evidence technician.
Steve Kolb, a retired police officer from Maryland who had graduated from the FBI National Academy, answered the ad.
Hunt said Kolb has proven himself to be the right person for the job.
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“Without any question you have to be detail-oriented,” Hunt said. “Because this is very, very important. And it’s one place that we have great liability in making sure that everything is accurate because court cases depend on the accuracy of this room.”
Kolb understood the undertaking.
When he was hired more than two years ago, he was tasked with sorting through some 6,000 pieces of evidence. Many items were from cases that had long been closed.
Within six months, Kolb purged almost 2,000 pieces of evidence. When he was finished, he had cleared out more than half of the unnecessary items in the evidence room.
Kolb said the purge and cataloging was overwhelming.
“It was,” Kolb said. “It’s a team effort because I have to identify the item, meet with supervisor and review the case to determine whether it can be retained or can be purged.”
Kolb also invented his own organizational system. Every piece of evidence is submitted by an officer with an intake form. The evidence piece is now stored in an envelope rather than a plastic baggie for easier identification and each intake form is then stored in a filing cabinet.
“So once the form is filled out, I assign a barcode to that item, I put the barcode also on the form and then I file it in numerical order [in the filing cabinet] where I have it for easy access,” Kolb said.
Kolb added an air purifier, dehumidifier and exhaust fan to the evidence room to control the climate and preserve evidence. He made sure all items that require cold storage are kept in a refrigerator.
How important is to Kolb?
“It’s very important because we are there to help the person who has already been victimized once,” Kolb said. “It’s our responsibility to make sure that we don’t drop the ball along the way and that we can be there for that victim, because if we don’t do our job, the case can’t be prosecuted and therefore the victim is then victimized again.”