Boston police Commissioner Edward Davis is getting praise from defense lawyers and his one-time foe, Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley, for his work in completing an exhaustive audit of 110,000 pieces of drug evidence that date back to 1990.

“As far as drugs go I don’t know many police departments that want to go back that far,” said Jack King, staff lawyer with the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

King said many states use a system that destroys the drugs immediately after they return from a testing lab. Otherwise, he said, “they have a tendency to grow legs and walk away.”

That is exactly what a 14-month Police Department audit uncovered when it found 700 missing bags of drugs, and another 265 that had been tampered with, including some where a thief replaced narcotics with aspirin.

Davis wants state lawmakers to adopt a similar system to California, where drug destruction is mandated by law rather than on a case-by-case basis by a judge. Under existing law, in order for the Police Department to get rid of all the drugs in its inventory, judges would need to order each from the 74,465 cases destroyed.

In response to the audit’s shocking findings, Davis improved security and record-keeping at the evidence locker, which has been closed since December 2006.

Among the upgrades are a $100,000 computer system used for tracking drug evidence, more personnel added to the facility and a new system for organizing the bags of drug evidence.

“I welcome the commissioner’s reforms, which should avert the type of long-term neglect and mismanagement that allowed this corruption to occur in the first place,” Conley said.

Conley, along with Boston Police Department internal affairs and the FBI, has launched a criminal investigation into the missing and tampered-with drugs. The FBI is on hand for laboratory and technical support, Davis said. Massachusetts-based defense lawyer Tim Burke, who also represents the state police troopers union, said by doing the dirty work and uncovering the scandal, Davis has saved the department’s reputation in court.

“You have to start fresh,” he said. “That’s exactly what he’s done. I think it’s helped the credibility of their drug investigation tremendously.”