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From Detroit to Boston - A Tale
of
Two Cities
Wednesday December 16, 2009 by
Crime Lab Report
Click here to Print
The cover of the October 5, 2009 issue
of TIME Magazine said it all- The Tragedy of Detroit.
It introduced a year-long series to explore the
decline of what used to be the fourth largest city in
America.
According to Daniel Okrent, “the story
of Detroit
is not simply one of a great city’s collapse.
It’s also about the erosion of the industries that
helped build the country we know today.”
Ironically, Detroit
was one of the first cities in the United States to establish a
scientific crime laboratory in the late 1920’s.
So it came as quite a shock last year when problems
inside the Detroit crime lab
surfaced.
In April 2008, then Detroit Police Chief
Ella Bully-Cummings suspended the operations of the crime
lab’s firearm section and ordered an independent audit to
investigate discrepancies uncovered by a local defense
attorney. The attorney hired an
independent expert to examine evidence that was originally
tested by the Detroit Police Department crime lab, which
concluded that a large number of fired cartridge cases came
from a single weapon.
The defense expert, however, concluded
differently. In fact, at least two
weapons were involved in the shooting.
After a second independent expert hired by the Wayne County
Prosecuting Attorney confirmed the defense’s test results,
the Michigan State Police were asked to conduct an
independent audit of the Detroit firearms section.
According to a report prepared for the
Michigan
legislature, the Michigan State Police spent $596,686
to perform a thorough and time-consuming audit, which
revealed an error rate of 10% in the 200 firearms cases it
reevaluated. The DNA section of the laboratory was
accredited by Forensic Quality Services – International
at the time of the audit.
On September 25, 2008, the city of
Detroit
made the decision to shut down the police lab, citing
concern that the problems of the firearms unit likely
indicated a systemic problem that potentially affected the
other forensic disciplines as well. The lab's sworn
police officers were reassigned to other positions in the
Detroit Police Department. The civilian employees were
either shifted to other jobs within city government or given
the opportunity to apply for forensic science positions
within the State Police laboratory system.
This decision resulted in a
projected 20% increase in cases for the Michigan State
Police at a time when it, like many of its state
counterparts, was already stressed.
According to State Police
estimates, the
Detroit
lab handled approximately 20,000 cases annually. Their
FY 2008-09 budget was approximately $8.0 million, with
support coming from the city of Detroit general fund, Federal grant support,
$250,000 from the State Forensic Laboratory Fund, and
revenue from forensic science reimbursement fees.
The laboratory provided services
in firearms, DNA, latent prints, drug analysis, toxicology,
and alcohol analysis. Laboratory staff included 32
uniformed officers and 36 civilian employees.
It would appear that Detroit took the easy way
out.
In Boston, however, it was a similar story but an
entirely different outcome.
In 1998, Stephan Cowans was
convicted of the attempted murder of a police officer after
two eyewitnesses and a fingerprint match tied him to the
crime. DNA tests conducted some six years later led to
Cowan’s exoneration.
It was also determined that the
fingerprint evidence used to convict Cowans was erroneous.
Newly appointed police commissioner Kathleen O’Toole shut
down the latent print unit, which also was not accredited,
until a Grand Jury had completed its investigation.
An independent review conducted by Ron
Smith and Associates contained strong language that
summarized the problems: absence of involvement and
administrative supervision from upper management,
excellence is not expected, therefore not achieved,
many suspect identifications are not being made which could,
and should, be made, and ACE-V methodology [is] not
being followed.
Commissioner O’Toole made the
decision to rebuild the latent print unit-from scratch.
She hired a civilian, Jennifer Hannaford, with previous
experience from the nearby Vermont State Police to begin the
overhaul. Hannaford had previously worked at the
Oakland Police Department for five years before travelling
east. She brought another co-worker from Vermont to help with the
transformation.
To head off any police union opposition
to the hiring of civilians to perform the latent print work,
department officials guaranteed a suitable number of jobs
for sworn officers working as crime scene technicians.
In a recent article that appeared in
The Weekly Detail, Hannaford explained that criticism
from the Boston press culminated with the May 6, 2004
Boston Herald article entitled “Misfits Dumped
into Key Cop Unit,” which alleged that the latent print unit
was “The Land of Misfit Toys,” a place where officers with a
documented history of trouble, such as drug and alcohol
abuse, were exiled.
Hannaford’s goal was not to simply
restructure the unit, but to build a new unit from the
ground up, with the ultimate goal to have the laboratory
accredited.
Her first problem was the lack of
established policies and procedures. Documents from
her two previous employers and the Forensic Group at the
Boston Police Crime Laboratory were used as the basis for a
complete set of policy and procedure manuals. The new
documents were evaluated using ASCLD/LAB standards and by
the guidelines from the Scientific Working Group for
Friction Ridge Analysis Science and Technology (SWGFAST).
According to Hannaford, the first
two years brought long hours but the commitment displayed by
the staff was tireless.
“We had all walked into a job
where none of us had a working knowledge of how the unit had
previously functioned. It was a period of creativity
and tremendous teamwork among a group united in the task of
wringing order from chaos.”
All the hard work and long hours
paid off when the Boston Police Department Latent Print Unit
successfully achieved accreditation from ASCLD/LAB on
October 15, 2009.
Hannaford says there is no secret
to their success; it takes a total commitment from the staff
and the administration.
“We used resources wisely, sought
assistance from our community, and chose from operations
that had already demonstrated levels of superior service.”
Crime Lab Report
salutes the Boston Police Department’s latent print unit and
we hope their story will be an inspiration to other
organizations that accreditation is well worth the effort.
We also hope organizations that
operate crime laboratories understand that the neglect of a
laboratory’s organizational culture can quickly morph into a
full-blown scientific nightmare.
Science requires strong
leadership. The two can never be separated.
*****
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