Tens of thousands of pieces of police evidence are still unavailable to cops, defense attorneys and the courts because of Hurricane Sandy. NY1 Criminal Justice Reporter Dean Meminger takes a look at what's still being done to save that material.

Hurricane Sandy took the NYPD by storm — just as it did much of the city's neighborhoods along the water.

Four years later, thousands of containers of police evidence and many DNA samples are still unusable. 

"Roughly about 6,000 barrels of biological evidence is affected, in which, at the point to make a decision on what to do with it," said NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Support Services, Robert Martinez.

And that could mean the disposal of some of that evidence because it was contaminated or ruined by flood waters.

"We had some testing done we are waiting for the results of that to come back," Martinez said. "And then we are going to come up with a plan of what to do with the remaining of that."

Police warehouses in Brooklyn that stored that material including weapons and drugs were hit hard. Sandbags used to keep water out were no match for Hurricane Sandy.  

"We had the Red Hook facility and Kingsland facility, that basically got close to 5-feet of water within the facility," said Martinez said. "Also, our central records, cold storage records got inundated with water."

Some paper records apparently were saved, but the NYPD doesn't have possession of all of them yet.

"They are getting the whole process and also digitized, being returned probably within the next six months," Martinez said.

And it wasn't only evidence warehouses, many precincts received significant damage.

One of those, the 60th precinct in Coney Island. Basement jail cells were flooded and some walls knocked down.

Repairs have since been made.

And some two hundred police vehicles had to be replaced. They were completely demolished in the flooding.