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In the office of the Manhattan Property Clerk, evidence and lost items arrive by the tens of thousands. A small band of officers and civilians has to manage never-ending pressure.
Charmain Carryl moved with purpose through the dim, cavernous room.
She turned down a shadowy aisle of rolling library stacks and scanned the shelves until her eyes landed on the aim of her pursuit: a samurai sword.
The sheathed blade, an identification tag tied to its golden hilt, is just one oddity kept in the basement of New York Police Department headquarters.
The office of the Manhattan Property Clerk, as it is known, is a subterranean repository for lost objects and the tangible aftermath of crime and misadventure. Ms. Carryl has been a police evidence and property specialist there for more than a decade. Thousands of people walk through One Police Plaza each day not knowing an archive that allows the criminal justice system to run is just one story below their feet.
Almost every item that passes through the borough’s 22 precincts must go to the basement to be numbered and cataloged to be held as evidence for a trial or wait for its rightful owner. Some objects come from crime scenes. Others were turned in after they were left behind on a park bench or a sidewalk.
Ms. Carryl supervises the meticulous bookkeeping. She keeps track of the expected — guns, drugs, samples of DNA — and the bizarre: a gold dental grill, a half-drunk bottle of Smirnoff and a weathered brown suitcase. It is stuffed with muskets.
On this Thursday afternoon, Ms. Carryl returned the sword to its proper place, brushed the dust off her long, blue skirt, and walked through the maze of stacks. To her right was an ornately carved wooden cane near a pile of umbrellas. At the end of another aisle was a plastic bag that contained a single subway token minted in the 1990s. Near it was a plush, red-eared dog that has resided there since 2008.
But the Police Department faces the same problem that many New Yorkers do: a lack of storage space. Even this cavernous basement is only so big.
To make room, workers routinely take inventory to see which items meet the stringent criteria for removal. Two white sheets of paper pinned to a bulletin board offer a reminder: Lost objects worth at least $5,000 have to stay for three years. So do guns used in felonies. And any evidence related to a homicide, sexual offense, arson, explosion or an internal affairs investigation has a simple note: “Never destroy.”
Sgt. Surabi Consuegra, the boss of the clerk’s office, carefully tracks the numbers. Standing next to Ms. Carryl, Sergeant Consuegra read the data aloud. She said 60,733 items had entered the clerk’s office last year, an average of about 235 a day.
Then she cleared her throat and smiled. Ms. Carryl did a drumroll with her palms against a filing cabinet.
A total of 146,001 items had been cleared for destruction, Sergeant Consuegra said.
“Last year was a very good year,” she said. She emphasized the tally’s final numeral: “That ‘1’ matters.”
But the inventory is always growing. During business hours, five days a week from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., a procession of officers passes through doors that resemble those of the Death Star. The clerk’s office has a rolling schedule for precincts to help handle the inexorable accumulation of stuff. The officers bear clear, sealed plastic bags filled with what was left behind when laws were broken.
Before Ms. Carryl’s time, the basement took in the .38 caliber-revolver that in 1980 was used to assassinate John Lennon and the bullets that took down mob boss Paul Castellano five years later.
The only time the basement was empty was most likely in 1973 when police headquarters opened, a 14-story building designed in the era’s imposing Brutalist style. Mayor John Lindsay said then that the police had outgrown their former hub on Centre Street, and the new building would give them more room.
It did not last. Overwhelmed by stuff, the clerk’s office in 1981 put more than 250 unclaimed items up for auction, including a $5,500 Cartier diamond-encrusted pocket watch discovered during a Bronx narcotics raid, the New York Daily News reported that year. Another auction in 1986 featured a 1949 Bentley, a 1981 Audi and one vehicle whose value was lessened by bullet holes and dried blood.
The police still put unclaimed property up for auction, but not before every effort is made to locate its owner. Last year, Ms. Carryl helped track down a lost cellphone that belonged to a French journalist who was visiting New York. After a lengthy verification, she had the device shipped back to him across the Atlantic.
Some inventory reduction happens naturally. Directly inside the Death Star doors is a waiting room for people allowed to pick up their belongings. (Wallets, keys and cellphones are among the most common.) When called, each person approaches a long counter to check in. A chain-link fence separates them from the workers, whose documents are illuminated by a single task light.
Some items have been in the basement for decades. Many can never leave.
Steps beyond the doors lies Sergeant Consuegra’s dusty domain where items arrive for initial inspection. The clear bags that hold evidence cannot be opened while in the possession of the clerk’s office: Contaminated evidence could mean the difference between conviction and acquittal.
On this day, Sergeant Consuegra watched as Eugenio Ramos, an evidence specialist, examined a black toy gun. He then looked through the corresponding paperwork to check for errors. Whenever he finds a mistake, Mr. Ramos must send the evidence or property back to the precinct it came from, and the process begins again.
“This is quality control,” Sergeant Consuegra said, adding, “You cannot break that chain of custody.”
Items that clear inspection are assigned a number that determines where they will be stored. The most sensitive — guns, drugs and money — are kept in the two rooms of the basement vault.
Tricia Samuel-Williams, an evidence specialist, is one of the few people who have the combination. On this Thursday, she spun the lock then swung the door open.
Inside were rows of ceiling-high shelves packed with 42,439 firearms. On one shelf was a faded brown backpack containing 10 Smith & Wessons, their wooden handles and chrome barrels still polished to a mirror shine. The revolvers have been in the basement since 1978. One was used in a murder.
Those must all remain here, Ms. Samuel-Williams said. Any gun used in a homicide, and the weapons found with it, cannot leave. Neither can firearms connected to crimes with open warrants — where the shooter was never arrested, or the case remains unsolved. She goes through the inventory every year to see if cases have been closed and space for a new gun can be made.
Next door are narcotics. The room stays at a comfortable 78 degrees, and its temperature and humidity are controlled through a complex air-exchange system. Cash used to commit crimes flows through here too. To render the bills unusable, every one has been perforated with a number and the word “EVIDENCE.”
Despite the shortage of space, some items are too precious to go.
On the other side of the basement is the 9/11 room. There, cardboard boxes hold beepers, Motorola flip phones, Casio watches and American flags covered with the debris from ground zero. Attached to each zipped plastic bag is an invoice that lists every attempt made to locate the item’s owners.
Ms. Carryl has been watching over them since 2013. Once a year, around Sept. 11, a woman calls Ms. Carryl to see whether her brother’s gold ring with an emerald stone has turned up. Each time, Ms. Carryl says no. Still, she looks — even for a single gemstone in case the gold band melted in the fire.
She keeps an orange sticky note stuck to the wall above her desk with the names of the woman and her brother, along with a description of the ring and a phone number.
One day she hopes to call it with good news.
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