ST. MARTINVILLE — At some police departments, an evidence room includes any number of cardboard boxes or Tup-perware bins stacked on top of each other.

At the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office, it’s a quite a bit more sophisticated than that.

With its hidden cameras, motion sensors and secret pass codes, the new evidence room here draws more comparisons to a vault than a dusty broom closet. Sheriff Ronnie Theriot likens the security to that of Fort Knox — only about half-jokingly.

(Use arrows above to view more photos) Advertisement

“We’ve put this in place to make sure nobody can breach the security,” said Maj. Ivy Perioux, a meticulous Cajun appointed to the new post of full-time evidence custodian. “You can have the best police officers on the road that you want doing a terrific job, but if you don’t preserve that evidence, you won’t know that nobody has tampered with it.”

Tampering with evidence in this vault might require an elaborate strategy. Every movement in and around the room is recorded and monitored at the parish 911 center. Sensitive alarms have been triggered by the reverberation of speakers in passing vehicles.

When Perioux arrives each morning, he needs four separate security codes just to gain entry to the evidence room. Not even Theriot knows the second two combinations.

But the security does not end there. The walls are protected by layers of sheet rock, metal and brick. A double roof hangs overhead.

“It’s to make sure that everybody is doing what they’re supposed to be doing,” Perioux said sternly. “It’s something that I’m sure a lot of private industries would love to have.”

Inside, Perioux carefully catalogues dozens of items each morning: guns, drugs “and just about anything you can think of.” Recently, he received a two-by-four piece of lumber reportedly used in an assault.

“One time, somebody broke into a house and brought their own dolly to haul the stuff out,” Perioux said. “It’s necessary because they may get fingerprints off that dolly.”

Everything is computerized and backed up with a hard copy to be sure. Each piece of evidence is given its own bar code sticker so it can be readily retrieved when it is time to go to court.

“It’s all about creating a paper trail,” Perioux said.

After the evidence is processed, Perioux tucks it away neatly in one of the vault’s massive lockers. The 20-feet-by-40-feet room stores seven rows of them — 35 lockers in all — that slide laterally at the push of a button to save space. Inside the lockers, each shelf can hold up to 600 pounds of evidence.

“There’s no wasted space,” said Kevin Ardoin, director of the Acadiana Crime Lab. “It’s state of the art and very innovative.” Ardoin said his staff was so impressed with the evidence room here they would likely use it as a model for future projects of their own.

Aside from the storage, the evidence room is also host to a pilot program in the 16th Judicial District in which certified de-puties conduct their own drug analysis on small quantities of commonly encountered narcotics.

The purpose of the program is to cut down on the overwhelming amount of drug cases the Acadiana Crime Lab receives each month. Testing is conducted on quantities of 25 grams or less of marijuana and cocaine.

“It expedites the whole process,” Theriot said. “If we get a positive test, we know we have a case. It helps everybody.”

The vault marks a significant improvement over the “semi-secure” evidence storage measures of yesteryear, Theriot said. The cost of the facility — about $700,000 — was covered by a $1 million bond issue, he said.

At a time of increasingly frequent DNA convictions — and exonerations — Theriot says the Sheriff’s Office has itself a gem.

“This will be for decades to come if we manage it properly,” he said.