At least three Columbus councilmen are warming to the idea of hiring two more full-time forensic scientists for Columbus Police Department’s crime lab.
Councilmen Marty Turner, Stephen Jones and Bill Gavin, of wards 4, 5 and 6, respectively, toured the crime lab Thursday morning, two days after police consultant K.B. Turner recommended extra staffing at the facility.
The new hires, if ultimately approved, would double the lab’s full-time staff, which now consists of Director Austin Shepherd and Claudette Gilman, a forensic chemist, and the occasional intern. The crime lab’s main purpose is to analyze evidence collected from crime scenes.
Shepherd said the need for more hands is the biggest challenge facing the crime lab, particularly in the face of a changing forensics field that necessitates having more people to help with analysis.
“It is the most pressing issue in the crime lab today,” Shepherd said.
The crime lab opened in 2007, and Shepherd said he’s trying to move it toward national accreditation.
Workload
In the eight years since it began keeping statistics, the lab has worked on 7,700 cases, documented 35,872 pieces of evidence, conducted 44,450 tests and responded to 254 crime scenes.
Shepherd said the crime lab works regularly with 11 regional agencies, not counting CPD and Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office. That work generates $60,000 to $70,000 per year, including money the city saves by not having to send casework to the state crime lab in Jackson.
Shepherd said he and Gilman each make about $45,000 annually.
“I’m moving toward the two (more) full-time people,” Jones said after the hour-long tour. “I think the crime lab has a real chance to make a real impact, not just in Columbus but the different areas that use the crime lab.”
Councilman Turner said he doesn’t think the city would have any trouble hiring two more full-time forensic scientists for the lab. He said the city could use money that’s earmarked for increasing the CPD officer roster to 77 once its staffing level reaches the budgeted 67. The police department now fields a little more than 50 officers.
“We’re already short on police officers,” Turner said. “I don’t think that would even impact our budget whatsoever. It won’t affect our budget until we’re fully staffed, so we need to use that money for the best benefit of the city right now.”
Increased crime lab staffing was K.B. Turner’s first concrete recommendation since the city council hired him in January as a consultant for CPD. The city will pay Turner $19,000 for his six-month contract.
Gavin said during Tuesday’s council meeting he would support the crime lab hires.
Training
If the crime lab gets two new forensic scientists, Shepherd said they’ll spend a year in training. They would begin working on cases their second year, but Shepherd said it would be similar to a residency in medical fields, and he and Gilman would supervise the trainees’ work.
Once they’ve completed the two years, the new hires could start working on cases with more autonomy.
Shepherd said he’d like to have one forensic chemist trainee to work narcotics and one criminologist trainee to work on physical evidence analysis.
The training is intense, Shepherd said, but it has to be because cases depend on accurate analysis and opinion.
“When you get on a stand to defend the opinion that you formulated based on your education, training and your scientific research, that’s going to make or break the case a lot of times,” Shepherd said. “…You’re basically putting an opinion out there and saying that’s the city of Columbus’ opinion. So there’s a lot of liability there as well.”
Shepherd also noted, while talking to councilmen Thursday, it’s easier in the long run for the crime lab to work with full-time employees because it’s difficult to retain part-time workers and interns.
“Let’s say (Gilman) and I go out to a crime scene and we have a volunteer or a part-time person with us and they collect some evidence,” he said. “Well a few years later, they’re going to have to go to court and testify to what they did. If we can’t find them that becomes a really big problem for that case — it could endanger the case and it could end up getting kicked out.”
Improved turnaround
It wasn’t uncommon for Columbus to wait six months to a year on results when cases were sent to the state crime lab. Now, Shepherd said, that turnaround is much faster — about three weeks for Gilman and about a month for him.
However, Shepherd noted the lab, which normally has a backlog of 20 to 30 cases, can shuffle its workload around if a major or particularly time-sensitive case comes in.
“It depends on what type of case it is,” he said. “For us, if we’re the ones doing the analysis on the evidence, we can process the crime scene and analyze the evidence in a week. We’ve cut that down from a year to a week, if it’s a rush case or a major case.”
District Attorney Scott Colom said he strongly supports the city hiring additional forensic scientists. He said the work Columbus’ crime lab does is crucial to his office’s ability to pursue cases.
Not only are turnaround times much faster for the local lab than the state one, Colom said, but the forensic scientists’ local availability makes it simpler to schedule them to give testimony during trials. He said, for example, the crime lab’s work was essential in the case of Keenan Montgomery, who was sentenced to 40 years in prison in early March for an armed hotel robbery.
Palm prints taken from the hotel counter and analyzed by the crime lab were a key part of that case against Montgomery, Colom said.
“In today’s world, people want as much scientific evidence as possible when it comes to crime,” he said. “Having a local forensic lab increases the ability to use scientific evidence against people who commit crimes, which increases our ability to get convictions.”
The Columbus Police Department Crime Lab works regularly with the following agencies outside of Lowndes County:
■ Aberdeen Police Department
■ Amory Police Department
■ Eupora Police Department
■ Louisville Police Department
■ Macon Police Department
■ Mississippi State University Police Department
■ Monroe County Sheriff’s Office
■ Oktibbeha County Sheriff’s Office
■ Starkville Police Department
■ Webster County Sheriff’s Office
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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From left, Marty Turner, Stephen Jones and Bill Gavin
