Everything in the Columbus crime lab starts with evidence collection.
Lab Director Austin Shepherd said he and Claudette Gilman, a forensic chemist, are constantly on call to respond to crime scenes. Once they’ve arrived at a scene, evidence is identified and collected for analysis. He said they can spend four to six hours at a location — sometimes longer, depending on the crime scene.
Once evidence is identified and returned to the lab, Shepherd or Gilman begins working to analyze it.
Shepherd, using an old Uzi magazine as an example, demonstrated Thursday a few of the methods the lab can use to collect fingerprints. One machine heats super-glue to a gas that collects a fine coating on objects and then can be used to take fingerprints. Another method involves using magnetic powder to transfer an impression of the print from the evidence to paper.
Once a fingerprint is collected, it can be cross-referenced against the crime lab’s fingerprint database, which contains fingerprints from 30,003 people in the region.
Shepherd said the work can be intensive, especially because there’s not always a clean fingerprint as shows like “CSI” portray. For example, he said a case might have 15 latent fingerprints, which have to be analyzed and imported into computer system, then searched against fingerprints in the database. The system returns the 10 closest matches, which then have to be compared to the freshly taken fingerprints.
“So by the end of the day, you’ve actually analyzed about 150 latent prints, but finished one case,” Shepherd said.
Claudette Gilman, the lab’s forensic chemist, analyzes narcotic substances that are brought to the lab to determine what they are. How long that can take depends on the substance, but she said synthetic or “designer” drugs that have surged in popularity in recent years can be very time-consuming.
“It’s taken three months for one drug,” she said. “And that took a lot of research on it. …You still have to do your day-to-day work, and since we wear so many hats here, it can be a busy, stressful day.”
Columbus’ crime lab can also analyze cell phones and video feeds from security cameras. The lab can use cell phones to determine where someone’s been, compare the network of contacts on one phone to another, and restore deleted text messages and other data if it has been overwritten.
Shepherd said the lab is the only one in the state that offers cell phone and video services, and that sometimes draws work from Louisiana and Alabama agencies.
“This is really valuable information,” he said. “This has led to a lot of arrests and a lot of solved cases.”
Columbus’ crime lab is one of four to offer its type of services in the state, along with the state lab in Jackson, and labs for the Jackson and Gulfport police departments and regularly works with more than a dozen law enforcement agencies.
The crime lab also collaborates with fire officials, for things such as arson cases.
Agencies outside of CPD account for about 75 percent of the crime lab’s work, Shepherd said. He said Columbus’ portion of work for the crime lab may increase with CPD’s recent partnership with the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office for a joint city-county narcotics task force.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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