Forensic Labs and Reality

by Lisa Black
Author of Blunt Impact
 
From TV you get the impression that forensic labs are vast, gleaming expanses of glass walls and expensive equipment, with mood lighting and every possible resource. I have worked in forensic labs for 17 years and the truth is not quite that glamorous. 

Forensic labs have come a long way and they’re improving constantly, yes. I’ve had two jobs in this field so far and at both places we moved to a new facility, got lots of new equipment and added personnel…but we still don’t resemble anything on CSI.

Sometimes aspects of that extremely high-tech TV lab aren’t real. In no department or agency anywhere in the United States can your average tech take a fingerprint and search it against every single person who has ever been fingerprinted in the world, including job applicants and military. Despite the fact that you’ve seen it on TV every day for the past 50 years, it isn’t true. It may be true sooner than I think, but it is not true now. 

Most databases are local. My database consists of people arrested in the city of Cape Coral, Florida, and recent arrestees in the surrounding county. I can search the databases of selected other cities (about 10) by going through some extra steps. I am embarking on a procedure to search the FBI database (insert sound of angels singing here) but I have no idea yet exactly how that will work. I have no access to job applicants or current personnel, even our own, and certainly not military. This is not backward. The technology has made amazing leaps in just the past decade or two, but it’s still not TV.

We also do not have databases with the chemical formula of every material known to man, such as perfume, wall paint or toothpaste. Companies make their living producing these items, so they’re not going to publish their formulas to any Tom, Dick or Harry who happens to ask. We do have mass spectrometers or FTIRs to analyze the chemistry of such items, but even the most underutilized lab tech is not going to have the time or resources to gather a sample of every kind of paint used in the world, and even if she did, as soon as she finished it would be time for next season’s colors to hit the market. 

Sometimes labs may not have a function or two (handwriting analysis, ballistics) because they’re not reasonable. How often do we really need to analyze wall paint? Most labs grew out of a local or state police department, and began with fingerprint and drug analyses (theft/burglary and drug offenses being the most common crimes committed). Other capabilities are added on from there. But if your town doesn’t get a lot of shootings, it doesn’t need a whole ballistics department when it can send any casings off to the state lab and get the analysis done for free. Perhaps not promptly, but the arrest will likely be made on witness testimony so the analysis can be done at leisure while the suspect cools his jets in a jail cell. 

How often would we really analyze the molecules of perfume in the atmosphere (as if they’d still be there five hours after the crime was committed)? Seriously, it might make a great ‘aha’ moment on a TV show, but try introducing that into a court of law. Me: “There was a hint of Chanel No. 5 in the air! The same perfume as the defendant is wearing right now!” Defense attorney: “So? They sell a bottle of that every thirty seconds.” Me: “Um, nothing. I just thought it was interesting.”

As for ‘hacking into’ the company’s database to find how many bottles they sold and then the store’s database to find out who they sold them to…well, I’m not a lawyer but I think Sears, for example, would be terrifically ticked off about that. Not to mention the ACLU. 

The capabilities of any lab will be a function of space, money and interest.

Space, for obvious reasons.

Money, for equally obvious reasons since new technology requires an investment for equipment, personnel and training. Sometimes this works out better than other times. It’s not always easy to estimate how much use you’ll get out of something when you’ve never had one before. We have a fancy ‘crimescope’ that can supposedly see undeveloped latent prints…I’ve never had much luck with it. But we also get daily use out of the large superglue fuming chamber. 

We purchased a very expensive photography setup with a great camera, filters and alternate light source for photographing fingerprints on a variety of backgrounds (shiny, printed, rounded, plastic) and developed with various methods (superglue, powder, fluorescent dyes), and even though my knowledge of working with filters and lights is more a process of trial and error than anything else, I’ve gotten a lot of use out of it to obtain prints I wouldn’t have otherwise.

And when I say ‘expensive’, I am not exaggerating. The FTIR I mentioned earlier cost $35,000, as I recall, and that was 15 years ago. I loved to analyze paint, synthetic fibers and adhesives on it, but, almost always, those items are still circumstantial evidence. I can prove the killer used the same brand of duct tape as was found in the suspect’s garage. But unless I can make a jigsaw match to that roll, the defense will just point out that the manufacturer made a lot of duct tape. I can say the fiber on the victim’s shirt is the same as the fibers in the suspect’s sweater, but how many of those sweaters did Timberland distribute?  In my current city where we do not have a lot of violent crime, I couldn’t reasonably ask the city for funds to buy one. Car paint can be much more definite, provided you’re lucky enough to have some chip off during the hit and run.
 
As the hair and fiber expert, a fading and almost completely lost field, I recently got a comparison microscope. (My boss had the idea of farming me out to other agencies since no one in the state does hair and fiber comparisons anymore…hasn’t really worked out but if you need a fiber compared, give me a call!) The problem was, there was only $12,000 in the budget and a decent comparison microscope starts at 40 grand. So, I’ve got a not-so-decent one.

DNA analysis is expensive, but we can get our samples tested for free by the state lab. However, the state lab limits us to five samples at a time, and those will probably take from one to three months, if not longer. We can get the city to pony up for a private lab which will get the results back to us much quicker but will charge from $600 to $1,000 per sample, depending on how fast you want it. And each case will have a minimum of three samples—victim, suspect and evidence. There’s no cheap way to get fast DNA.

Interest also comes into play. We continued doing gunshot residue tests after many agencies had dropped them, simply because our chief at the time believed in them. We have a fancy system capable of copying a computer (meant to be used for child pornography or white collar cases); however learning to use it requires a few long, pricey classes in other states, and after the guy trained on this quit to open a bar (long story), the powers that be are reluctant, understandably, to invest in anyone else. I do not argue with this, I just keep my head well down when the topic arises—you say ‘binary code,’ and my eyes glaze over.

In conclusion, you can’t assume what capabilities your local crime lab may possess or not possess until you ask them. And, though they certainly could be in play, you can’t assume that a lack in any area is the result of disregard, cronyism, backward thinking or bad money management. Most crime labs, like every other facility, try to do the best they can with what they’ve got. 
*******************************
Lisa Black spent the five happiest years of her life in a morgue. As a forensic scientist in the Cleveland coroner’s office she analyzed gunshot residue on hands and clothing, hairs, fibers, paint, glass, DNA, blood and many other forms of trace evidence, as well as crime scenes. Now she’s a certified latent print examiner and CSI for the Cape Coral Police Department. Her books have been translated into six languages. Evidence of Murder reached the NYT mass market bestsellers list. Visit her website at: www.lisa-black.com

Blunt Impact, available April 1, features forensic scientist Theresa MacLean and a series of murders surrounding a skyscraper under construction in downtown Cleveland. The first to die is young, sexy concrete worker Samantha, thrown from the 23rd floor. The only witness is her 11-year-old daughter Anna, nicknamed Ghost. Ghost will stop at nothing to find her mother’s killer, and Theresa will stop at nothing to keep Ghost safe. Kindle owners can find a bargain in Lisa's new book The Prague Project, written under the name Beth Cheylan. A death in West Virginia sends FBI agent Ellie Gardner and NYPD Counterterrorism lieutenant Michael Stewart on a chase across Europe as they track stolen nukes and lost Nazi gold, hoping to avert the deaths of millions of people.

The Best Location in the Nation

Guest Blogger Lisa Black

Cleveland, Ohio (pop. approximately 500,000) is a Great Lakes Port city on the southern short of Lake Erie. Among many other commerce and cultural kudos, Cleveland was the home of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, who created the comic book character Superman in 1932.

I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, for the first 36 years of my life. I swam in Lake Erie, felt the crunch of newly fallen leaves under my feet as I walked to school, spent summer nights in the Flats with teeming masses of the young and wild, music pounding out of the bars until everyone had to shout to be heard.

It was there I entered the world of forensics, spending the most interesting five years of my life at the coroner’s office. I didn’t mind the smell of decay, leached into the tile walls after decades of dead bodies. I learned to love the stuffy towering floors of the justice center where I waited to testify in trials, and the rattling of the rapid transit as it would cross the Cuyahoga River, steel valley cloaked in purple hues under the early morning mist. I loved my job for the stories it told.

One of these involved a missing escort, never seen again after a date with a new client. We could not prove the client did it, just as we never found her body. That was twelve years ago. But in Evidence of Murder I could write my own solution to the case of the missing escort. To do that, I needed to learn more about the history of Cleveland and a particular suburb, Lakewood.

America, as we are all taught, was founded on the idea of freedom. Europeans came here to be able to worship as they pleased, come and go as they pleased, break out of the strict social castes of the Old Country. At least that’s what we prefer to dwell on, because the reasons behind the founding of most major American cities are not quite so picturesque.

To sum: many American cities were founded to make money. The Dutch settled New York because it had a port and therefore a handy place to set up a trading colony, a franchise of the Dutch West Indies Company. Chicago came about when a Haitian man and his Indian wife set up a trading post at, again, a handy port. Los Angeles became organized when a Spanish bureaucrat convinced the king that the area could be a cash cow, since there were plenty of resources for the farmers to produce supplies to support the military forts, and both would usher in more trading with Asia. No lofty ideals involved; but then, Americans are nothing if not practical. 

And so it was in Cleveland, when the Connecticut Land Company sent Moses Cleaveland to set up a commercial port where the Cuyahoga River could take boats from the Great Lakes to within 4 miles of the Ohio river (and therefore the Mississippi, reaching the rest of the country down to New Orleans). Not even the disease-ridden mosquitoes could discourage them, not when there was money to be made.

That’s why people came to America, then and now—because they couldn’t make a living in a tiny town in Germany, as my mother’s grandparents found, or because a small place in Bohemia could only use so many cabinet makers, as my father’s. Around 1900, Cleveland had the second largest Czech population in the country and the fourth in the world. Many of them settled in a section of Lakewood, called Birdtown since the streets were named for birds—Robin, Lark, Quail.

This photo is from a school project to document the history of Birdtown. Click here to learn more and see more photos.

From their homes they could walk to work at one of the local factories, particularly the Cleveland Carbon Company, a collection of red-brick buildings next to what would later be the Red Line Rapid Transit tracks. Riding home from work at the Coroner’s Office, the impressive buildings where they once manufactured carbon brushes and other carbon items meant I had four stops left. Perhaps I was drawn to Lakewood because my sister worked in the hospital there for ten years. Perhaps I was drawn to the old manufacturing plant, similar to a woodworking factory my mother’s ancestor founded to help his fellow countrymen find jobs. In any case, I knew that Lakewood's Birdtown would be the perfect opening for my second Theresa MacLean mystery, Evidence of Murder.

I love setting my books in Cleveland. As I research the city's history, I run into my own.
 
For more information about my latest book, other books, or Cleveland, I’d love for you to visit my web site.