From the NY Times:
Perched on a narrow crook of land jutting into New York Harbor, the Erie Basin auto pound and evidence warehouse seems a logical place to store hundreds of seized cars, thousands of guns and 9,846 barrels of evidence containing sensitive DNA material.
It is easy for the New York Police Department to safeguard the secluded bunker, in Red Hook, Brooklyn, from potential thieves.
But not, it turns out, from the surrounding water.
As Hurricane Sandy lashed the city, the surge breached the warehouse’s roll-top doors and hurtled hundreds — perhaps thousands — of its barrels into the wet muck. The storm wreaked similar havoc at another Police Department warehouse by the water, along Kingsland Avenue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
Now, the damage is having an impact on the courts.
In at least six criminal trials in recent weeks, a police official has had to testify that evidence was inaccessible, but still existed, said Paul J. Browne, the chief spokesman for the Police Department.
Prosecutors and defense lawyers said they were concerned that many more cases could emerge. “This is likely to be the tip of the iceberg,” said Steven Banks, chief lawyer for the Legal Aid Society.
3 comments:
I would wager that stories like this will pop up for months if not years.
In the meantime, lets go dining at a restaurant bathed by the East River.
Got my drift?
What now?
Do some dangerous criminal get to walk away from their crimes?
Yummy!
Let's lunch at the Waterfront Crab House.
"GAD, Mabel!
That doesn't look like Oyster stew to me".
"Lucile, is that the luminous dial on your wristwatch glowing in the dark, or is it your Apple Martini"?
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