CLPEX Chat Board

From a recent news article:

Yosko said his nine-man police department has benefited tremendously from this and other grants over the last five years, racking up more than $100,000 worth of new equipment.

Yosko, who is the department's grant writer, said he is also applying for a grant to get an alternative fingerprint system.

The system would include a special light that would fluorescently illuminate fingerprints in a dark room.

"There all sorts of stuff out there," Yosko said. "You just have to know how to look."

This reminded me of an encounter a number of years ago when a small agency contacted my boss and asked for help. They could not get their brand new FLS obtained through a grant to work. They brought the light to my agency the following week and in the Lab I checked it out and it came on and seem to be working fine. I then asked the two individuals what seemed to be the problem. They responded that when they took it to a crime scene and turned it on and started looking for fingerprints (latent prints), they never saw any. They said they had tried it out on about 6-7 crime scenes and nothing. I asked them what they were treating the surfaces with and they both looked at each other and said "nothing". After a short discussion it seemed they were under the belief that all latent prints fluoresence naturally (inherent fluoresence). I then informed them that they needed to treat the surface under examination and that inherent fluoresence of latent prints althrough did occur on some rare occassions, but the majority would have to be treated for fluoresence to occur. I then asked them about how they were going to preserve the latent prints and well-----that is another story.

I am old enough to remember the LEAA grants. Departments would obtain thousands and thousands of dollars of equipment and never know how to use it. The sad part is that they would not send their people out for training on the new equipment because it cost MONEY. Gee Go Figure.

Lord please save us from Administrators with good intentions.

Administrators with good intentions DO send their people out for training.

I used to work for a chief whose philosophy was to provide the best possible service to the community. Unfortunately, he retired. The man the City Council hired to replace him confused appearance with performance. Under the new chief, the only priority was the appearance of service. Consequently, the quality of service plummeted and along with it, morale.

Two current examples pertinent to this discussion:
1) A nearby lab in the state in which I work had NIBIN/IBIS long before they got a terminal on the state AFIS. Why? NIBIN was "free" on a grant. AFIS would cost $$$. The quality of service was secondary to appearances that could be had for "free." Of course, no new personnel accompanied NIBIN and it was years before they got their first hit.
2) A large department in my state purchased digital cameras for its ID section several years ago, but neglected to buy suitable computers or software for another couple of years and still has not provided any training to its personnel. The people working there are mostly way behind the curve, although a few have sought the training on their own.

Doing things half-way for the sake of appearance without going all the way to make those things work is, indeed, a humbug (look it up in your dictionary).

I see this all the time.

One common thing I see is agencies that can afford to overbuy equipment with grants, but don't have the money to upgrade the parts of it that they actually use. They might buy a $50,000 turnkey image enhancement system that includes an image management system that they don't use, proprietary software that they don't use, etc. - but the one piece of software that they do use gets very out-of-date because they can't find $200 to update it every year. One day they find themselves unable to upgrade their operating system on that machine because their key piece of software won't run on the new OS.

Another thing that I see are agencies that buy these systems with grant money then later want help undoing many of the things that these systems have done. I know of an agency that lost all their mug photos because of their turnkey mug system. Others have been told that they need special interfaces or applications that have caused them problems.

The unfortunate aspect of all this is that the personnel in the photo or fingerprint or crime scene sections knew what they needed, but were told by administrators what they were getting - or unscrupulous vendors lied about what courts require, etc. As a result, money is wasted, morale is harmed, time goes by, training is missed, upgrades aren't done, good work is more difficult to do, etc.

I did learn though, that many of these decisions by administrators are presented to the Chief as coming from the front-line personnel. The Chief's then think that by getting item A instead of item B that they are doing what we ask for. If anyone is having an administrator forcing them to get something, it might be worth a casual chat with the Chief about the difference between what you're being forced to get vs. what you really need.

George

Fortunately (for me, anyway), most of the extravagant mis-use of grant monies seems to be concentrated on field agencies, not in our labs. Most lab directors for accredited labs seem to have come up through the ranks and are lab "rats" themselves who can identify with what is necessary, what is fluff.

We have many small city agencies who got loads of big federal dollars to buy MDTs for their city cars, then can't afford to replace or repair them when they inevitably fail. Sadly, the driving force is the fear that if you don't ask for money, then find a way to spend every penny, you'll not get it next year when you might really need it.

Thank you, Dennis, for not slandering my pet rat further.

I am glad for Mr. Davis that his lab director can differentiate between what is necessary and what is fluff. My observation is that many lab directors achieve their rank not through competence in the lab but through shmoozing the police administration. Believe it or not, there are police chiefs, sheriffs, and even state police administrators who put "Yes Men" in management posititions below them instead of choosing strong leaders. Such are the cases in the two examples I listed above.

At the risk of being flamed for a generalization, I have commented elsewhere about my concern for labs that are run by and funded by the agencies that collect the evidence and file the charges. This is a clear case of a fox in the henhouse. There are a few good foxes around that don't pay attention to the hens, but the situation is ripe for criticism in these days of laboratory accountability. Those labs that are not directly beholden to the parent or submitting agency would more likely be ethical and accountable with their findings and funding. That doesn't necessarily condemn all police labs, but if the shoe fits ........ Crime labs are no place for administrators without direct lab experience, and certainly no place for politicians.