CLPEX Chat Board

I'm trying to get an idea of the case loads for cities with a jurisdiction of app 220,000 and a pretty high crime rate (100 homicides per year). I know that each case is different but on average, how many cases per month does each examiner receive. Please list how many examiners are in the Unit and whether the Unit also processes the evidence. Thanks for responding to this as we are trying to assess staffing and expectations.

Hi Mitch

There is no "one size fits all" formula for how many cases per month an examiner should work. First, you have to decide on your philosophy for how you are going to approach cases. Your philosophy should be based on your tasks and the resources you have available. Two examples below:

1. In a former job with a state lab, I covered a third of my state, most of the time as the only LPE in my lab (verifications went by inner office mail to another lab in the system once a week, then came back a week later). There were approximately 85 police agencies in five counties eligible to call me out for crime scenes and submit evidence for processing. They could process their own scenes and evidence and submit their lifts, if they preferred. Mostly, they processed their own scenes and evidence on misdemeanors and property crimes, but would frequently call me out for murders or serial crimes. I frequently took major case prints from suspects. I also did all the AFIS searches, both through the state system and IAFIS. Except for murders and rapes, I adopted a philosophy of "the greatest good for the largest number of users." In other words, "thorough and complete" went out the window except for murder or rape. For processing, I used one method and moved on. I did not use sequential processing. I frequently had twenty cases out on my bench all at the same time, all the evidence run in the big Mason-Vactron 5000 superglue cabinet together. If there were good prints, take photos of them. For paper items, I might have a dozen out on the bench at a time. No DFO or indanedion, only ninhydrin, take a few photos, and move on. Large batches of dope, the lab manager directed me to use "random sampling" the same as the drug analysts used. On drug cases, the unwritten rule was to make one ident and move on to the next case. The detective or prosecutor could ask for continued comparisons, but rarely did. I took shorthand notes with ballpoint on paper and typed my own reports. We did not use a LIMS system with worksheets and dropdowns at the time. Most of the time, I was shuffling a personal backlog of 600 cases and abandoned a lot of requests when the statute of limitations expired. My last year there, I wrote reports on 595 cases -- an average of 50 per month, which included scene requests, processing evidence, taking inked prints, running AFIS, doing comparisons, and giving testimony. I had to move quickly and focus on "The greatest good for the largest number of users."

2. In my current job, we have the luxury of being "thorough and complete." A separate crime scene unit processes scenes and most evidence. We download exemplars or request them from the assigned detective; Latent print examiners never take inked prints. Some evidence is submitted from major scenes and a full time latent print techician assigned to processing uses standard sequential processing protocols. Virtually every latent deemed AFIS quality is searched by another Latent Print Technician assigned to that specific task. We have LIMS with worksheets and dropdowns ad nauseum. Reports are generated from the worksheets. Unlike my last agency, at this one we have adequate personnel and our backlog is currently zero. We don't even track productivity. I honestly can't tell you how many cases I worked last month or last year, but I do know that it was only a fraction of the number from my previous job. Here, we are "Thorough and complete."

Assess your resources. Define your tasks. Determine an appropriate philosophy for your situation. Then for a year, pursue a strategy based on your resources, your tasks, and the philosophy you have adopted. After that, you will have a good idea of whether you need to adjust your operation and what kind of case load each examiner should be able to handle.

We put our numbers up each year in the form of an Annual Report. You'll find 2013 - 2017 numbers listed there. The TL;DR answer is that we do ~5000 cases a year with 18 examiners and we also process evidence (~10000 pieces a year). The population of the county we serve is 2,188,649.

Boyd,

Are your 18 examiners just doing latent prints lab work or do they also respond to crime scenes?

The Examiners do respond to scenes, but not that many. We have a dedicated processing unit that goes out to collect just fingerprints. Examiners who are stationed at the lab are more likely to be called to a scene and Examiners can also be utilized when scenes are complex or occur after hours.