FDNY prepping controlled demolition of burned out NYPD evidence warehouse
The city will move toward a controlled demolition of the burned out NYPD evidence warehouse in Brooklyn, the FDNY said.
A safety fence will go up around the ruins of the warehouse on Columbia St. on the Red Hook waterfront over the weekend and heavy equipment will be brought in, an FDNY spokesman said.
The project to dismantle the building and remove debris will begin at some point next week, the spokesman said.
Determining the cause of the fire will take additional time as fire marshals have not been able to access the area where the blaze started.
There was a sprinkler system in place, but the fire grew too fast for it, destroying much of the biological evidence stored there along with many other items including vehicles, the NYPD said.
Also on Thursday, the city Department of Design and Construction confirmed that prior to the fire, there was a $4.6 million project, involving six contractors under way.
One of those contractors spotted smoke coming from a “high shelf” in the warehouse right before flames engulfed the building at 10:30 on Tuesday morning.
The job, according to DDC spokesman Ian Michaels, involved removing old electrical conduit and electrical devices damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and installing new equipment including conduit, electrical substations and switch gear.
Sandy destroyed 5,000 55 gallon cardboard drums filled with DNA evidence when the ground floor of the facility was flooded by the storm surge, police said.
Michaels said there were workers and DDC officials onsite Tuesday at the enormous warehouse, but they were not near the spot where the fire started.
The NYPD has yet to fully assess what has been destroyed. Much of the DNA evidence that was held there is from before 2012, and included evidence from cold cases.
The warehouse was also a repository for seized illegal ATVs and dirt bikes, as well as vehicles used in crimes.
Possibly lost in the fire is the patrol car Police Officer Edward Byrne was assassinated in while guarding a witness in Queens in 1988 and the mobile command post the Police Officer Miosotis Familia was sitting in when she was fatally ambushed in the Bronx in 2017, police said.
The loss of the older evidence is concerning for people trying to prove they were wrongfully convicted, several defense lawyers told the Daily News.
“For defendants challenging old convictions, the fire is catastrophic,” said veteran attorney Ron Kuby.
“I’m quite confident in saying there are many prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted, who may never be able to prove it because evidence was destroyed in this fire,” Kuby said.
In the cases where the evidence was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, prosecutors were able to use photographs of the evidence, a law enforcement source said.
