In an effort to standardize its procedures with departments around the world, the Long Beach Police Departments Crime Lab last month was awarded an international accreditation.
Announced by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB), LBPDs lab now conforms to more stringent standards of drug chemistry, toxicology, firearms, latent prints and crime scene investigation. That will ensure that the department is better able to standardize work sent to and from other internationally accredited agencies.
The ASCLD/LAB Legacy Program previously accredited the lab, but the new accreditation is harder to achieve, according to officials.
Criminalist and Lab Director Jasmine Jefferson added that the accreditation also would allow the LBPD to apply for some grants that the department previously wouldnt have qualified for. Shes been working toward the accreditation since 2011 with the crime labs budgeted staff of just 16 employees.
We didnt have to make major changes, but we did have to make sure the language in our reports was consistent and check to make sure we are following through procedures the same way, she explained. We were doing good work before, and we are doing good work now.
That good work was demonstrated last week as employees continued laboring behind the scenes as the accreditation was publically announced. The staff at the Crime Lab handles evidence from crimes throughout the city.
Heather Cochran, a forensic specialist, analyzed a palm print found on a window from the scene of a robbery. The work she does to compare prints, aided by computer technology and databases, helps connect criminals to crimes.
In another area of the lab, where the air was filled with the sticky-sweet smell of marijuana, Greg Gossage looked through a microscope and weighed a sample of the plant. He used chemistry to confirm what it was. Fifty percent of the workload at the crime lab is done on drug cases.
Just down the hall, Troy Ward was busy at work using a new bullet tracking technology that was added to the crime lab last month. Long Beach is only the third agency in the United States to upgrade to the 3-D system, which already has been adopted by the Los Angeles Police Department and the Boston Police Department.
Ward, a criminalist supervisor, tries to match bullets found at the scene of crimes to guns that may have been used in other crimes. If he finds a match, he calls it a HIT, and the department is up to 500 HITS so far, according to certificates of recognition posted in the lab.
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Long Beach's Crime Lab Wins Top Accreditation