Sterling Clifford, a police spokesman, said that there are more than 200,000 pieces of evidence in storage facilities and estimated it could take a year to inventory them. Holback also told the judge that complying with the order and searching the evidence damaged in Isabel creates a biohazard and must be handled by an independent contractor.
The tropical storm flooded the property room in the basement of police headquarters at 601 E. Fayette St. Workers and visitors had to wear protective suits, masks and gloves because of mold and diesel fuel that leaked from damaged generators, according to a 2003 article in The Daily Record.
"There was clearly damage, but it wasn't what you would call a disaster," said Circuit Judge John M. Glynn, who toured the property room after the flood. "It was just wet, like when four or five inches of water gets in a basement of a home. ... Since then, I've had exhibits show up in court that have water damage, but they were still usable."
At the time, police spokesman Matt Jablow told The Sun that evidence from "older cases" was damaged. But in 2001, the General Assembly passed legislation permitting convicted felons to seek to have DNA evidence retested with newer, more sophisticated technology.
While searching for Arey's clothes, the contractor will be instructed to catalog all of the items damaged in the flood, Holback told Allison.
"This will benefit not just my case but every other biological case after me," Arey, now 59, told Allison in November. But Clifford, the police spokesman, said yesterday it is doubtful that an inventory "would be especially helpful in any way" beyond satisfying Allison.
Michele M. Nethercott, who runs the public defender's Innocence Project in Maryland, said the problem with evidence storage in Baltimore is more widespread than the material lost in the storm and not limited to Arey's case. Recently, evidence from two rape cases involving city police officers disappeared from the city's evidence collection unit.
"The hurricane, that's probably part of it, but there are problems with the record-keeping system," Nethercott said. "When you start getting prior to 1990, it becomes very difficult to track things by a complaint number. Some of the records are literally on hand-made cards."
Since 2000, the Police Department has stopped destroying homicide and rape evidence, but before that, it was left to detectives' discretion whether to keep or destroy it, or return it to its owner.
