Southgate police evidence room
Southgate Police Chief John Christmann brings council up to date on the police evidence room project. L to r: Chief John Christman, council members Mark Messmer, Aileen Okura and Jackson Curry. Photo by Robin Gee | LINK nky contributor

With $150,000 in the budget, a decision on location and now the selection of a contractor, Southgate is on its way to building a new police evidence room.

At their meeting on Jan. 22, Southgate city council approved a recommendation to hire Cincinnati-based Kramer and Feldman, Inc. The company will build a new evidence room within the city’s Electric Avenue building.

The recommendation came from Jim Kaiser, project manager for Emboss Design, hired by the city to design the project. Kaiser noted Kramer and Feldman’s was the lowest bid at $87,000, and the company had several positive referrals.  

While the city set aside $150,000 for the new room, that figure includes additional and upgraded storage equipment. The cost is nearing the budgeted amount, explained Mayor Jim Hamberg, but the city is working with the police department to look at what budget items could be moved to next year’s budget if needed.

The project was first suggested by Southgate Police Chief John Christmann near the end of 2023.

At the time, he warned the evidence room was too small to accommodate all the physical evidence accumulated. Anything related to a crime that has DNA evidence must be kept for 50 years, he said. Each piece of evidence for a crime must also be stored separately, and there needs to be space to accommodate larger items.

As it stood, their evidence room would not meet the standards of accreditation. Christmann said if an accreditation review were to happen at that time, the evidence room would fail.

City officials set aside money in the 2024 budget. They hired Emboss Design in October 2024 to prepare a design-build concept for the room with necessary specifications to assist the city with construction bids.

The contract for Emboss was for $28,100, which came out of the $150,000 budget. Since then, the department has focused efforts on assessing storage needs and purchasing some equipment for the room.

A date for the project has not been set, but next police accreditation review will take place in 2026. The plan is to have the room ready for that inspection.