If you want to keep your friend’s cake recipe a secret, don’t let Claudette Gilman walk off with a sample.
She has access to machines that can identify every component in the cake, just from the slightest crumb.
“That way, I’ll know the super secret recipe your friend has,” joked Gilman, director for the city-owned Columbus Forensics Lab.
Obviously, that’s not how Gilman uses the lab’s three gas chromatograph/mass spectrometers, but that’s how she explains to others how they work. In reality, they help identify unknown substances and provide analysis law enforcement agencies across Mississippi rely on when investigating drug cases.
In November 2022, Lowndes County bought the lab a new GC/MS machine and the city entered a five-year lease for another – a roughly $340,000 investment to accompany the sole machine the lab had used since at least 2013.
Before the new machines arrived, Gilman said the lab had a “two-year” backlog of more than 1,000 cases. As of September, the lab’s report to the city council enumerated the backlog at 825 cases, and Gilman said case turnaround time is reliably sticking to her goal of one year. Analysis for a single-exhibit case can be complete in as little as two weeks, she said.
“Drug case requests can fluctuate a lot. … One case I had 526 pills that I had to count out, color code and sort by shape and pattern,” Gilman said. “With that kind of case, it’s going to take a while.”
But another stated goal in 2022 justifying the purchase of the GC/MS machines was generating more revenue from outside agencies. While Gilman said about 40 agencies outside Lowndes County use the lab for drug analysis, revenue numbers are static.
In the last three fiscal years (2023-25), the forensics lab has generated $94,000 in revenue for the general fund, an average of just more than $31,300 per year, according to records The Dispatch obtained from the city through a public records request. In that same time period, the lab’s annual budget has swelled from $287,000 to more than $425,000.
Not only is revenue averaging about $12,000 less than what the lab generated in fiscal years 2021 and 2022, at its current rate it would take nearly 11 years for lab revenue to cover the value of the newest GC/MS machines.
Gilman said that’s optimistically about how long they last.
“As long as you have a good service and you take care of what you can do in house, you can hopefully have it for 10-plus years,” she said.
Even so, she said the lab’s oldest machine is “still rocking and rolling” after a dozen years.
More people, more revenue?
Machines are one thing. People are another.
Outside of Gilman, who started at the Columbus lab in 2013, people don’t often stay very long.
In the past three years, the lab has lost its only other full-time forensic chemist and one of its chemist trainees to other agencies. She now has two new trainees, but they can’t directly handle case work until their training is complete.
“Like with anywhere, you’re going to have people come and go,” Gilman said. “While they’re here, you want to make sure they have a good environment, and that they have the tools to learn what they can.”
The lab has equipment to analyze fingerprints, but no fingerprint analyst. It also has a vacancy for a lab technician.
Still, Gilman said she starts working on about 54 cases each month, not counting continuing work on cases she’s already begun, and performs more than 1,000 tests.
In a given year, new cases coming to the lab can range from several hundred to more than 1,000, with the lab fielding more than 600 case requests in 2025, Gilman said.
Mayor Stephen Jones said he wants to see the forensic lab generate more revenue, but he is happy with its performance under current circumstances.
“Right now, I think they are doing a great job,” he said. “It can produce more money, but that’s something we’ve got to look at and see if we can make it better.”
Jones said he would like to see the lab earn state accreditation, which should help its reputation in drawing new business as well as when its chemists testify for criminal cases in court.
“Once you get accredited, when you go to testify, they know you can say everything in this lab is how it is supposed to be … and tested the right way,” Jones said.
He also wants to revisit pricing for the lab. Drug analysis cost an outside agency $60 per exhibit, the same as before the lab received the two newest GC/MS machines.
But making sure the lab is properly staffed is key, Jones said, and he wants to push for the necessary investment to recruit and retain the right people in the Fiscal Year 2027 budget. By then, he plans to have the data to set solid revenue goals for the lab that justify those investments.
“If you want top people, you’ve got to pay top people to recruit,” Jones said. “In the past, we weren’t really looking at it as an income-producing thing, so it really wasn’t always paying for itself. Now that we’re looking at it in that way, you have to hire people … and you’ve got to pay them.”
Ward 6 Councilman Jason Spears, who chairs the city’s finance committee, agrees the forensic lab should produce a return on the city and county’s investment. He told The Dispatch he is open to exploring what that would entail.
“If you’re going to increase the revenue, you’ve got to have the personnel there to do it,” Spears said. “I don’t know if the city has really looked at it that way. We did our budget, and we know what we were asked to provide for that specific department, but now that some of these questions have come up, maybe we need to revisit.”
The last element is recruiting more outside business, which Jones called an “easy fix.”
For now, Gilman relies mostly on word of mouth, but she remains surprised at how few agencies “know we’re here.”
Jones believes getting the word out through organizations like the Mississippi Municipal League and sheriffs and police chiefs organizations will help, but he doesn’t want to get the city’s cart before its horse.
“You want to do that, but you want to make sure you have everything in place also so you don’t start taking on all these (outside cases) and overload (the lab),” he said. “We want to make sure we’re working on our part first.”
‘Kind of a no-brainer’
With the lab falling under the city’s purview, Columbus Police Department isn’t charged for its services.
Lowndes County was once a paying customer, but it bought the lab a GC/MS machine in 2022 under conditions it would not be charged for drug analyses and its cases would be expedited upon request, Sheriff Eddie Hawkins told The Dispatch. The lab can use the county machine to generate city revenue from outside agencies.
“Our relationship with the city crime lab has been better (since 2022),” Hawkins said, noting that county cases get turned around faster.
It is also far more convenient than any alternatives.
“The closest state-run lab to us is Meridian,” Hawkins said. “… That’s a three-hour round trip plus the time you’re there waiting. So your whole day is shot just going to the crime lab. With this one being here, it takes two minutes (to drop off exhibits).”
Even with a four-hour round trip, Alex Fauver, commander for the Lafayette County Metro Narcotics Unit, moved all the unit’s cases to the Columbus lab a couple of years ago from the state-affiliated lab in Batesville.
“The backlog had gotten so bad at the state lab, we were anywhere from 20 to 22 months getting results back,” Fauver said. “… We actually lost a few cases that we didn’t get back within the 24-month (statute of limitations).”
Fauver heard about the Columbus lab, brought 25 cases or so for testing and got results back in five months.
“So it was kind of a no-brainer,” he said.
Now, the unit brings about 300 cases a year to Columbus, Fauver said, making it the largest lab customer outside of CPD and Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office.
“I kind of spread the word to other departments and agencies, and they started going there,” he said. “When business picked up, the backlog got a little worse, but … we’re still somewhere around the 12-month range.”
Both Hawkins and Fauver said their agencies have to use private labs for quantitative analysis – measuring the amount and intensity of drug samples – which can be “pricey,” Hawkins said.
Gilman said bringing quantitative analysis to the Columbus lab is a “work in progress.”
Shorter term priorities are hiring for her two vacancies, Gilman said, and getting the fingerprint lab up and running.
While the lab already can extract data from cell phones, Gilman said requests for that service are down to only eight this year due to more local agencies bringing that in-house. Long-term, she said she would love to see the lab expand the digital lab to accommodate computer forensics and maybe even branch out to firearms.
“Just being able to offer a little more to our agencies in the future,” she said.
Zack Plair is the managing editor for The Dispatch.
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