New York Police Department evidence warehouse having 30 Years of evidence from unsolved crimes has burned down mysteriously.
Evidence, including DNA and items collected from crime scenes, dating back up to 30 years may have been destroyed in a 3-alarm fire that overtook a New York City Police Department storage facility in Brooklyn. Eight people suffered minor injuries, fire officials said.
The blaze erupted around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Erie Basin Auto Pound, a facility in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood where the NYPD stores evidence, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said in a press conference.
According to NYPD Chief Jeffrey Maddrey, the building was a police department pound that stored “a lot of biological evidence” as well as e-bikes and cars. “DNA, things from past crimes, burglaries, shooting incidents, we have some biological evidence here as well,” Maddrey said at the press conference. “It’s mainly evidence, but we store other things there as well.”
Officials said that rape evidence kits were not stored at the facility. “The evidence goes back a long time, 20-30 years. Some of the evidence was also property from (Hurricane) Sandy as well,” Maddrey added.
Police said they won’t know the extent of the damage until the fire is put out, a task the fire department said could take several days. But Hodgens said that he would “estimate that most of the contents are damaged by fire.”
The investigation into the cause of the blaze is ongoing.
“We attempted an interior fire attack, but the members were overwhelmed by the amount of fire and we had to back all of our firefighters out of the building and go to an exterior attack,” Hodgens said, adding that at one point, part of the building collapsed.
Fire officials are using three marine fire boats and drones to attack the fire.
“It’s a deep-seated, heavy volume of fire, that’s hard to get to the seat of the fire,” Hodgens added.
The fire at the Erie Basin Auto Pound, a low warehouse situated atop a long, curving breakwater on the Brooklyn waterfront, broke out at around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, FDNY Chief of Department John Hodgens said. Police Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey, who joined Hodgens at a briefing at the fire scene, said the facility is used to store DNA evidence from crime scenes as well as e-bikes, motorbikes and cars.
“It’s mainly evidence but we store other things there as well,” he said.
Dr. Darrin Porcher, a retired NYPD lieutenant, said the loss of evidence will tremendously impact cases where defendants are looking to appeal as well as cold cases. Cold cases are very difficult to solve and any and all evidence can be important, he explained.
At least eight people suffered minor injures from the blaze, including three New York City Fire Department (FDNY) firefighters, three emergency medical services personnel and two civilians, FDNY Chief John Hodgens said at a presser Tuesday.
“This fire is probably going to go on for a few days before we’re able to fully extinguish it and get inside, possibly, to get to the deep-seated areas,” Hodgens said.
Hodgens estimated that most of the warehouses’ contents were damaged “just based on the amount of fire we know is in there.”
The fire chief added that a section of the warehouse had collapsed and a full collapse is possible because of structural damage and the added weight of water used to suppress the blaze.
The warehouse also contained “large amounts of combustible material,” including lithium batteries inside electric bikes and scooters.
Maddrey said at least 14 NYPD service members worked at the impound as well as six contractors.
The chief said contractors initially observed the fire in shelving inside the warehouse and alerted department personnel.
“For right now, we do not know too much about it, so it will be an active investigation,” he added.
The NYPD did not say whether damages from the fire would affect other investigations.
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