NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — Advocates are calling for a full accounting of what was lost in the massive warehouse fire that held decades’ worth of police evidence last week in Red Hook.
The three-alarm blaze erupted on the morning of Dec. 13 at 700 Columbia Street. The structure houses the NYPD’s Erie Basin Auto Pound.
Eight people were injured in the fire—three firefighters, three EMS and two civilians. All of the victims suffered minor injuries. The cause of the fire is still under investigation.
The Legal Aid Society said that the destruction of evidence could have dire consequences for their clients’ ongoing court cases.
“So a lot of it is evidence that we as the wrongful conviction unit are hoping to obtain that property to retest it for DNA,” Elizabeth Felber, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society told 1010 WINS.
Felber and other advocates want the NYPD to give a full accounting of what was in the warehouse and what was lost.
“Then correlating those items with whose case [it was], who was the defendant in the case,” Felber explained.
A lot of that evidence, according to the NYPD, goes back 20 to 30 years which is the time period of cases many of Felber and her colleagues' clients are working on.
“That's what most of our cases are,” Felber said. “That was the error of mass incarceration, where the judges handed out sentences like Halloween candy.”
The Legal Aid Society’s wrongful conviction unit currently has 250 people waiting for help.
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