Mount Pleasant Town Hall Magazine

43 www.MountPleasantMagazine.com | www.ILoveMountPleasant.com | www.MPTownHall.com MOUNT PLEASANT Town Hall officers or town employees, that wasn’t going to happen. “Our team had to be there at every step. Other people wanted to help, but we just couldn’t allow it,” Horton said. “Someone on the team had to be there at all times. We had to have eyes on the evidence at all times.” The move started, of course, in the old evidence room. One team member loaded boxes onto a cart and another rolled the cart down the hall and to the back door of the old police headquarters, where a 17-foot U-Haul truck was waiting. Dealing with the intense heat and humidity common in July in the Lowcountry, Horton moved the boxes onto the truck, which was driven a few hundred yards to the new Town Hall building. The boxes then were unloaded onto a cart and rolled into the new and improved evidence room. The team completed the job in four trips, then spent another day loading the boxes onto shelves and into the long-term room and drug room in the new evidence facility. “Actually, it went rather smoothly,” Horton said, adding that there was one hiccup – an armed robbery at a local bank on moving day. Kinder was dispatched to the crime scene, and, for the next three hours, the old evidence room was locked down. was under the watchful eye of at least one of the four members of the Mount Pleasant Police Department’s Evidence and Crime Scene team. As an added precaution, an independent auditor vigilantly observed the entire process, making certain at least one member of the team always had his or her eyes on every shred of evidence. “The biggest thing was maintaining the chain of custody,” explained Horton, who has headed the team for the past four years. “If we lost control of the evidence at any time, we probably couldn’t have used it in court.” Horton said he and his team moved a total of 312 bankers boxes that contained around 8,900 items. Another 790 items were moved to a dedicated room for long-term storage, while firearms and drugs had to be transported from the old Police Department headquarters to the new Town Hall as well. As far as assistance in the move from other police