INVENTORYING PERSONAL AND AGENCY PROPERTY

When an officer dies, regardless of the cause of death, but especially in a line-of-duty death, their personal property needs to be collected and returned at an appropriate time to the surviving family. This should be an uncomplicated task but often becomes not only complicated but embarrassing to the agency and the family. The cause is that during the inventorying of personal property items are discovered that are inappropriate for the officer to have had; illegal to possess; or embarrassing to the family,members of the agency or others.

Therefore, chiefs should make an agency policy that simply states that whenever an agency employee dies their personal and agency property will be immediately and discreetly collected and secured until it can be properly inventoried and divided into agency property and personal property and returned to the appropriate persons or entity. This means that the officer’s agency vehicle is secured.

It means that all brief cases, equipment bags,notebooks, articles of clothing, equipment etc. are collected and secured.It means that all lockers and desks are secured. It means that agency and personal computers are locked and secured. It means that all computer discs are collected and secured.

Here is why this needs to be done:

1. After an officer died his brother and an agency supervisor went to clear out the officer’s locker together. Inside they found a collection of photographs of the officer with a woman, not his wife. Now the family knew of the relationship. If the supervisor, representing the chief, had been responsible for inventorying the locker then the chief would have had an opportunity to evaluate any options and the necessity or appropriateness of returning the pictures to the wife. But with the family member involved there was no opportunity for options.

2. In another incident the chief had the officer’s partner inventory the locker and he discovered a series of love letters from another agency officer, not the officer’s wife. Since the officer was not instructed as what to do with any controversial items and he was not the representative of the chief he began to tell others. Soon the rumor mill was working overtime and the involved female officer was caught up in a very ugly personal situation. Again, had the chief had the information privately brought to him he could have had an opportunity to resolve it without embarrassing the female officer, the reputation of the deceased officer, or the surviving family.

3. One evening after a death I went into the detectives squad room to clean out a detectives desk when I found a female officer going through the desk. When I confronted her she told me she had had an affair with the officer and wanted to make sure there weren’t any letters or pictures in his desk that would expose their past relationship. I told her to wait outside.I inventoried the desk contents and did find some letters and photographs. I turned them to the female officer.

4. In one officer’s locker we found an extensive collection of driver’s licenses that went back for years. Probably Id’s that the officer found in his shirt pocket at the end of watch after writing a ticket or interviewing someone and he forgot to return. Instead of returning the ID in an appropriate manner he began to collect them in his locker. By the dozen.This was embarrassing to the department and they all had to be appropriately inventoried and booked and dealt with. But the first person notified of this situation was the chief.

These examples show how embarrassing or controversial information or items can be inadvertently learned or given to family members or people who don’t need to know. There is also a high risk for the potential for rumors to be started that will only exacerbate the situation. The chief needs to control access to this type of information and have an opportunity to make anappropriate management decision.

You never know where some item or information will appear. That is why everything belonging to the deceased officer needs to be secured until it can be inventoried. This includes information on computer discs or in computer files. Often personal or personnel information is in computer files or on discs that is embarrassing to the department or the people involved.When these computers or discs are returned to the surviving family or put back into general use within the department without being closely reviewed,there is a potential for confidential or embarrassing information to be made public.

So the best policy is to make a simple policy that states that whenever an employee dies everything belonging to the employee will be immediately and discreetly collected or secured until it can be inventoried by a representative of the chief.

John Cooley

PoliceFunerals.Com