Evidence Ruined by Storm May Subvert Court Cases
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.
full: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/nyregion/hurricane-destroyed-evidence-held-by-new-york-police.html
