They Have Evidence

Where: Police Evidence Locker, Pinellas County Sheriff's Office, 145th Avenue N., Clearwater

Public access: This place has 120,000 pieces of evidence in criminal cases and other property, including drugs, guns, porno and dirty money. The front desk is behind bulletproof glass -- and a bulletproof wall. So what do you think your chances are of getting in? That's right: Zero.

Element of danger: Very low. The guns are cleared of ammo, and zip ties prevent accidental firing.

Why we went: Bloody evidence, body parts, pot, pills, rifles, handguns, gambling machines, surveillance tapes -- this place has it all. A CSI fanatic's wet dream.

What we discovered: Keeping track of the 62,000 pieces of evidence and seized/found property that comes in here each year is a high-tech job, and in Pinellas County it falls to Lt. Larry Smith. Each item brought in by deputies is logged into a computer and given a bar code sticker that tracks its journey onto the shelves, to court and back. Constant inventories and checks and balances ensure that the evidence is where it is supposed to be and doesn't "walk off." The booty includes 1,900 guns; 77 gambling devices; 1,013 audiotapes; 9,000 blood samples (kept in refrigerators and freezers); and 197 pieces of pornography.

The porno, by the way, is kept with seized cash and drugs in a secure vault on site that can only be opened by two people with passkeys. Why lock up the porn? It seems that in the old days, it was kept in stapled paper bags -- until supervisors noticed that the bags had been stapled and restapled a hundred times over by curious workers. So into the vault with it.

The warehouse is ringed inside with bicycles, hundreds of them. They, along with other items to be disposed of, are donated to charity and auctioned to the public online at propertyroom.com.

So, has anybody seriously tried to break into the warehouse to tamper with evidence or liberate a key or two of coke? No, Smith reports.