Forensic commission reviewing Austin, El Paso crime labs

The Forensic Science Commission directed their complaint screening committee today to consider a new case out of the Austin crime lab, discussed here on Grits, in which a fired analyst claimed that reports were issued without performing the underlying testing. They will decide at a future meeting whether to form an investigative panel based on the Complaint Screening Committee's recommendation. The Commission also questioned why Austin or Travis County officials hadn't forwarded the allegations about "drylabbing," in the industry terminology, at the time they first heard of the complaint. (The City had requested the Department of Public Safety look into the allegations, so they were clearly aware before now and could have notified the FSC.)

In other developments at the FSC, most of their day was spent discussing management shortcomings at the El Paso PD crime lab, were a lab worker who analyzed controlled substances turned out to be unqualified and incompetent. About 7-8 folks were there from El Paso including the District Attorney, an assistant city manager and various crime lab personnel.

Bottom line, while most of the media attention has focused on a single lab worker who couldn't pass basic competency tests, Commissioner Sarah Kerrigan, to the nodding affirmation of her peers, strongly urged that that lab worker not be used as a "scapegoat" to avoid bigger changes. When the El Paso lab began its certification process in 2006, the accrediting body found a list of shortcomings they asked them to fix, and which the lab claimed to have resolved. In 2011, though, when the incompetent lab worker came to light, a new assessment identified virtually all the same problems at the lab, still unresolved, that were cited in 2006.

The biggest problems involved the culture of the lab, which until recently was run by a police sergeant with no scientific background who had ultimate decision making authority, including the authority to resolve conflicts among scientists. The Quality Assurance manager, until recently, was disempowered and couldn't stop work when something went wrong. Indeed, during one period in 2010, two different people both thought they were the official quality manager; one of them was mistaken, but clearly there was a lot of confusion.

At times, very junior staff newly qualified in their field were put in the position of doing technical reviews of others' work and performing other high-level functions that were likely over their head. Kerrigan likened it to someone just getting their drivers license and then being hustled off to race in a Grand Prix.

The lab's internal culture discouraged questioning other examiners: "trust the examiner" was the office philosophy, said Kerrigan, but unfortunately not all of the examiners were trustworthy. Kerrigan mentioned one staffer who at different times came back with positive and negative results from the same sample. At least one false positive has been identified - a case where the test came back negative 44 times and positive once, so the lab reported the result as positive without mentioning the 44 negatives.

Kerrigan said their review of more than 1,400 pages of records and interviews with numerous officials during a site visit had revealed a fundamental lack of scientific leadership at the lab. The lab in particular still cannot find a qualified manager. A recent job search turned up empty, and they're reposting the position on January 23. Another commissioner expressed that it sounded like the lab was staffed by technicians instead of scientists able to engage in independent thinking. Kerrigan noted that lab staff attended training that taught correct practices, but nobody ever connected the dots when they came back to El Paso and things operated in a more rudimentary, less professional way. Another odd red flag: Caseloads at the EPPD crime lab are exceedingly low and it's not clear everyone employed in the controlled substance testing division is really needed. In 2010 they processed 863 cases; in 2011 it was 504. By contrast, a crime lab chief sitting next to me at the meeting said his analysts processed 150-200 samples per month, apiece!

The El Paso crime lab was put on probation last year by the accrediting body, which extended probation in September but finally took them off two days before Christmas. A representative of the accrediting body, though, told commissioners that ending "probation" didn't mean all is well or that El Paso is off the hook. They only have until April 6, he said, to find a qualified lab director and fix the other problems identified by the accrediting agency.

The Department of Public Safety agreed to perform a fairly extensive audit of the EPPD crime lab's controlled substances division within the next 30 days, so there will be more to come on this story.