CLPEX Chat Board

I often get email from high school and college students asking about careers in various forensic sciences. After making sure they are not stuck on the popular TV image of Gill, Horatio, and company; I tell them about different possible paths they can consider. An important variable is whether they are willing to work their way up through a law enforcement agency to get where they want to be. A lot, don't want to go the sworn route - they are looking more towards a civilian route. In the past I had often noted that there where more civilian opportunities in the West Coast states and perhaps Florida. In your geographic area, are the evidence techs/ID personnel/photographers/etc., more likely to be sworn/civilian/50-50.

For Pennsylvania, the majority of crime scene and ID personnel are sworn personnel. There is a move being attempted to reassign sworn state police lab personnel back to patrol assignments and replace them with civilian personnel.

Thanks for any input.

At the King County SO (Seattle) all of those positions are civilian. The majority of the people in those positions, in WA, are civilian too. I do know a couple of commissioned officers that work at smaller departments where ID work is part of their duties. I would guess in this area that the smaller departments are more likely to have those different duties performed by officers.

I know a homicide investigator in NJ who says that he can't imagine the day when civilians would be allowed to do those jobs in NJ though. He seemed surprised at how many of us in the class were civilians doing those different jobs. To him that was foreign. He did the photography, developed his own film, lifted his own prints, etc... When needed, they would send the prints/evidence to the FBI for processing and comparison.

Here on the West Coast (California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Nevada, Alaska, Idaho), the vast majority of the Forensic jobs are filled by civilians. About twenty or thirty years ago, most of the law enforcement managers realized that people with science degrees were better candidates for forensic jobs than sworn officers who had more training in criminal justice, traffic codes, laws of arrest and had the temperament to deal with dangerous assignments. Most of the sworn officers/deputies I have met would go crazy comparing stacks of latent prints or classifying piles of fingerprint cards. They usually became officers/deputies for the action, not the tedious and monotonous work of forensics.

Plus, officers/deputies usually want to advance to become detectives or motor officers or sergeants or other ranks. Managers found it was a bad investment of time and training funds to teach an officer/deputy to become proficient in latent print comparisons, about a 3-to-5 year commitment, just to have that officer/deputy transfer into another assignment or get promoted. With civilian employees in forensics, there is little opportunity to change assignments unless they change agencies. Therefore, you will find civilian forensic employees with 20 years at the same department.

Years ago, I saw one agency that used sworn status as a club to hold over their sworn forensic employees. The "motivational tool" was that if the sworn employee didn’t get enough latent print makes or didn’t process enough evidence, that employee would be “back on patrol” in some desolate, rural area.

While I am not saying sworn folks would not make good forensic employees, it just doesn’t seem to be a good use of resources for the department or the individual. My thirty years of training has been in chemistry, forensic science and latent prints. I have had no training in arrest and control, traffic and criminal codes, or interrogation techniques. I don’t wear a uniform and I don’t carry a gun. But, I am very effective with my magnifying glass and fingerprint brush, and I don't ever want to have to arrest anyone.

Kathy

The agencies I work with around here (South Central Texas), those large enough to have dedicated forensic units, overwhelmingly use civilians. For one thing, maintaining an officer binds the agency to provide the required law enforcement CE, firearms qualifications and many other things that must be done to properly maintain a sworn officer. That's all time taken from forensic training and development, and it's just not cost-effective.

It has nothing to do with whether or not they can do the job, except for the obvious limitations on development cited above, but it takes a real commitment in time and money to maintain an officer-analyst as a full-time analyst.

The local agencies in my county are far too small to maintain dedicated forensic units. I perform LPE duties in the course of my primary assignment as a detective. I also have to competently locate, collect and preserve every kind of physical evidence, most of it for analysis by the state crime lab. Essentially, I am my own crime scene tech. But I can tell you that the majority of agencies do not have the ability to properly deal with the full array of physical evidence. What knowledge I possess is substantially a result of my personal efforts to acquire the skills and knowledge (and a good bit of the equipment).

If you look at the IAI web site (www.theiai.org) today, there are seventeen forensic jobs posted from law enforcement agencies, along with others from non-law enforcement agencies. From the way I read them, none of the forensic jobs at these law enforcement agencies require that the person become a sworn officer. Rather, they are looking for folks with science degrees and/or experience in the scientific field.

Kathy

At the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office in Tampa, Florida, we are migrating from sworn positions to civilians through attrition. As a sworn Crime Scene detective is promoted, transferred, retires, etc., they will be replaced with a civilian.
Although there still remain a large number of agencies in the state with sworn Crime Scene personnel, the trend seems to be to civilianization of these positions.
For anyone in an administrative position that is considering such a move, I would caution you not to look at cost savings from reduced salaries as one of the benefits. If you want to attract and retain highly skilled and talented Crime Scene personnel, you will have to bite the bullet on salary. Your cost savings will come in the form of training required to meet whatever standards your state requires of them beyond the training that they must receive to keep them current in forensics.

Royce

Royce Wilson wrote: For anyone in an administrative position that is considering such a move, I would caution you not to look at cost savings from reduced salaries as one of the benefits. If you want to attract and retain highly skilled and talented Crime Scene personnel, you will have to bite the bullet on salary. Your cost savings will come in the form of training required to meet whatever standards your state requires of them beyond the training that they must receive to keep them current in forensics.
Royce

Royce,

I think this is a great point. Any department that would hire civilians in these positions to "save money" is likely really missing the boat. In fact I think we're beginning to see that the cost on a salary basis is starting to go past those of sworn personnel. As the forensic scientist positions start to demand more schooling, training, knowledge, etc... in order to perform at the highest level in the office/lab and in court, the salary demands for the positions are increasing too.

The cost savings are those that aren't immediately recognized on paper, but come in the form of more effective crime solving across the country.

Here in Oregon, most of the civilian Forensic Specialists are paid MORE, up to 20% more, than basic officer. Since most agencies require a science degree for their Forensic Specialists but not for officer, they are willing to pay more.

Kathy

There are several reasons for "civilianizing" jobs that do not require arrest powers in a police agency. Some of these include:

1) The governing body authorizes hiring based on the average national ratio of police officers per population unit. In this situation, the more jobs the police agency can civilianize (dispatcher, jailer, ID technician, etc.) the more officers the agency can actually put on the street. This is a sneaky way to juggle the stats, but in many cases it works.

2) A budget pinch causes the police agency to civilianize positions in order to pay less in salaries and avoid cutting positions.

3) The police agency observes that officers on a career track seldom stay in forensic positions long enough to justify training expenses or retain expertise and civilianizes those positions in order to hire and retain qualified people.

In the case of #1 above, a second decision is required in either the direction of #2 or #3.

In #2 above, the agency runs the risk of attracting the wrong type of person. Many of those low-pay positions attract "wanna be" cops who will take the low pay just to be around the police, with the hope of getting promoted to "real cop" someday. There are applicants who can't pass the education standards, the pre-employment tests the officers have to take, the psychological requirements for an officer position, the background checks, etc. Or there are truly good, qualified applicants who get hired but leave within a few years for a better paying job. But the bottom line is this: In most cases, you get what you pay for. This is not meant as an indictment of all civilian ID technicians or latent print examiners who get paid less than the officers in the department, just an observation based on 30 years in the business and having taught a couple thousand students in latent print and crime scene classes.

In #3 above, the agency recognizes the advantage of hiring and retaining qualified personnel. The salary is as high or higher than the salary for sworn officers. In my department, for example, as a bench level latent print examiner I earn a salary roughly equivalent to that of a patrol lieutenant. When an opening occurs, there are plenty of well-qualified applicants to chose from. The turnover rate of criminalists is low. Many, if not most, of the criminalists stay until retirement and are happy with the pay even in bench level positions.

You can guess which departments have more problems and which have fewer.

And I forgot to mention another observation: In departments where the civilians earn less than the officers, the officers' attitude toward the civilians reflects the department's position -- the officers tend to hold the civilians in contempt. In departments where the civilians earn the same or more than officers, the officers' attitude again reflects the department's attitude and the civilians are held in high esteem.

Where would you rather work?

I am a Civilian CSI in North Carolina. There are more and more agencies here going the civilian route. The biggest thing for me is that I feel like I do not get the same respect as a sworn officer does and sometimes I feel like a second class citizens when I hear "we need to keep the sworn personnel happy."

Let me guess -- you are a civilian who is paid less than officers so your agency can save money, your position did not have as rigorous qualifications as the sworn officers, and your agency sees civilian employees as necessary but not directly related to the overall police function (some in the administration may even refer to you as a "necessary evil). Is that about right?

My advice: Be willing to relocate. Do whatever it takes to earn a degree in hard science, preferably chemistry. Then go to work in an ASCLD-LAB accredited laboratory. You will find it a totally different world.

Guest wrote:I am a Civilian CSI in North Carolina. There are more and more agencies here going the civilian route. The biggest thing for me is that I feel like I do not get the same respect as a sworn officer does and sometimes I feel like a second class citizens when I hear "we need to keep the sworn personnel happy."

I'm a civilian latent examiner attached to a total sworn CSI section also in NC. I started out as a civilian CSI in a total civilian CSI section at another agency. I haven't had the "second class citizen" experience that you have. E-mail me. Lets talk.

The worst case scenario of forensic "second class employees" I have seen was a medium-sized department where they assigned officers on light duty or with bad attitudes to the forensic section as punishment or to hide them. The unit was known as the "sick, lame and lazy bureau." As you could guess, the unit was not very productive or successful. It was even a worse shame since some of the officers who wanted to do a good job and asked to go into the unit didn't receive proper training or support from the management.

As far as civilians being treated as second class employees, I have also seen that in some agencies and it is not just the forensic folks. It included the records clerks, dispatchers, secretaries, etc., anyone who wasn't a cop. That is not a healthy agency to work for. I would get out as quickly as possible.

Kathy

Our csi unit is all civilian. It seems to work alot better that way. our sworn personel didnt really want to be there any way. they felt they were not doing the job they were trained to do. they wanted to be out on the streets fighting crime not in the csi lab or the property room. I like it that way too since I am a csi. It has given me an opportunity to do a job that I absolutly love. I hope the department never decides to go back to sworn in the csi unit.