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[Posted on Wed, Feb 22 2006]
State-of-the-Science Crime Lab Blooms in Garden StateSource: Forensic Magazine
forensicmag.com
February/March 2006
By Douglas Page
The smell of fresh paint and sawdust is still strong in some corners of the new State Police Technology Center in New Jersey.
The Technology Center opened in May 2004, next door to the equally new Troop C Headquarters and Communications Center. Sprawled over 38 acres just outside Hamilton on Route 130, the complex is the new home of the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety Forensic Science Center, one of the most preeminent forensic laboratories in the country.
The Forensic Science Center features several streamlined forensic components - namely, a state-of-the-art Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) unit, advanced criminalistics laboratory, and a computer forensics compound called the Regional Computer Forensic Laboratory (RCFL).
The RCFL, the first such laboratory in the Northeast dedicated to analyzing digital evidence on a statewide basis, is one of thirteen national FBI sponsored sites where forensic investigators can extract electronic evidence from hard drives, cell phones, digital cameras, palm pilots, and other hightech gear that have become the digital lock picks and false keys of today's wired criminal.
In addition, the forensic center contains a complete array of forensic science units, including criminalistics, toxicology, controlled substance analysis, breath alcohol testing, forensic photography, firearms, anthropology, nuclear DNA, and a CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) Database unit. A Laboratory Information Management System organizes all records, collecting, recording, and storing laboratory information under strict document and quality control protocols.
“What's unique about this facility is that all this is under one roof,” said Thomas A. Brettell, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Forensic Sciences. “I'm not aware of another lab in the country that offers all these services in one place.”
One distinctive feature is that the Center was constructed specifically to do forensic work. None of New Jersey's previous forensic facilities - nor many other forensic establishments in the country - were built strictly with forensics analysis in mind. Ajit Tungare, Chief Forensic Scientist, ensured that all personnel, at every level, had input into the planning and laying out the design.
“Before this site opened, we were constantly retrofitting buildings for criminalistics and DNA,” said Brettell, who joined the New Jersey State Police Forensic Science Bureau in 1976.
The Center's new examination rooms, for instance, were designed especially to control evidence, in this case by minimizing or eliminating contamination altogether, while at the same time maintaining tight security.
Brettell said his staff of over 100 forensic scientists recently received national recognition from the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board when the Center was recognized for having all of its laboratories achieve accreditation.
But, the crown jewel of the 205,000 square foot technology complex is the mtDNA unit, which goes a step beyond nuclear DNA profiling. This new tool in the laboratory's arsenal against crime allows scientists to forensically analyze difficult samples from bones, teeth, hair shafts, decomposed bodies, and charred remains - even though customary sources of DNA profiles like skin tissue and body fluids are missing from the evidence sample.
The New Jersey State Police was one of the four law enforcement agencies in the United States to be selected to partner with the FBI to install the mtDNA laboratory. The other three states that have these unique mtDNA labs are Arizona, Minnesota, and Connecticut.
“The FBI is overloaded with casework,” Brettell said. “They were the only public-funded laboratory in the country doing mtDNA. They needed help, so they came up with the concept of organizing a partnership through the establishment of four regional state mtDNA labs to handle some of their workload.”
Basically, the FBI still fields the requests, but now prioritizes and assigns cases to one of the four regional labs, regardless of the cases’ region of origin.
“We not only handle all New Jersey state mitochondrial DNA cases, but we now analyze cases from other states as well,” Brettell said. The new mtDNA lab opened at the end of October, 2005, and immediately began receiving cases from Pennsylvania, Florida, and Massachusetts.
The new Forensic Science Center was designed to accommodate the increased workload. In 2003, the New Jersey Forensic Science Laboratory analyzed over 33,000 cases. Its DNA laboratory handled 1,100 cases, a 30 percent increase over 2002. Now, the workload is even heavier, thanks to a 2003 New Jersey law that expanded the crimes for which DNA can be collected from perpetrators. Prior to the law, New Jersey’s DNA database contained roughly 10,000 individual samples. Since the legislation was signed into law by Governor James E. McGreevey in September 2003, New Jersey’s Division of Criminal Justice has collected ten times that many DNA samples from convicted felons - samples that can now be compared to crime scene evidence taken from unsolved rapes, murders, and other crimes.
One interesting note; the Center's massive footprint - as large as 150 three-bedroom houses - is already being used to capacity.
“A year ago we thought this building was huge, but we’re already busting at the seams,” said Brettell. “We’ve actually had to redo office space to accommodate more personnel and are planning to redesign the CODIS unit to handle the increase in convicted offender sample submissions.”
Douglas Page writes about forensic science and medicine from Pine Mountain, California. He can be reached at douglaspage@earthlink.net.
[Original Article on the Forensic Magazine web site ]