Evidence Technician

Evidence is pretty important stuff—criminals spend their entire careers trying not to make it, Cops spend theirs trying to find it, and you spend yours taking care of it. As an Evidence Technician, you organize, document, and store a police department’s evidence.

When evidence comes in from a crime scene, your job as an Evidence Technician starts. You process the evidence, which means you record what it is, where it was found, and what case it pertains to. From there, you might send it out to a lab so other Evidence Technicians can use highly specialized equipment to take a look at it, or you yourself might dust for fingerprints or search for further evidence from it.

Evidence spends quite a bit of time in court, since a person’s innocence or guilt can depend on it. You get a case’s evidence ready for its big day by preparing exhibits for the court. And you keep detailed logs of where the evidence is at any point. This job has a lot of paperwork involved in it, but it’s for a good reason. Mishandled or, worse, lost evidence can get a case thrown out and let a guilty person walk free.

After a case ends, your job continues. You still have the evidence to dispose of, and you do this according to your department’s rules. These rules will tell you how long you can keep evidence, and how to get rid of certain pieces of it. After all, something with chemicals or blood on it can’t just be thrown in the trash.