Title: What happens to evidence once a police case is closed? - Quora
Headings: What happens to evidence once a police case is closed?
What happens to evidence once a police case is closed?
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Will the police let me know when an investigation is closed?

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Answered 4 years ago · Author has 7.3K answers and 11.7M answer views
It is tagged, bagged and placed in a evidence room never to really be used again. I have been in an evidence room before in the Novi Police Department a long time ago and saw weapons, drugs and money. Now their particular evidence room was pretty small so I’m sure they had another one off site that housed older evidence. Since not all cases are solved and some even turn into cold cases, evidence will be kept forever so if new updates happen on old cases they’ll still be able to use it. Only in certain cases where the defendant is found innocent will evidence be returned. 5.1K views
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Korey Daniel
Bob Dekle
, J.D. Law, University of Florida (1973)
Answered 1 year ago · Author has 1.4K answers and 3.1M answer views
It is either given back to the rightful owner, pressed into service if its useful and there is no one to return it to, sold at auction if it isn’t pressed into service, or destroyed by court order if it is useless. Sometimes dishonest custodians steal it. I’ve handled a number of cases like that. We used to have a real problem with bales of marijuana magically turning into cypress mulch in evidence vaults.