DPS: 2/3 of Austin DNA lab analysts so bad they can't be retrained

The latest reports from the Austin PD DNA lab almost stun the senses, revealing that 2/3 of DNA analysts employed there were allegedly so incompetent that the DPS crime lab folk don't think they're retrainable. Reported the Austin Statesman:

Immediately after the Austin Police Department shuttered parts of its troubled crime lab, police officials asked experts from the Texas Department of Public Safety to help retrain APD staffers with a goal of possibly getting the lab up and running again. 

But Monday, DPS officials told the department they had lost faith in most of the staffers they were working with — and wouldn’t be returning. 

Instead, according to a one-page letter obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV, only a select two from a staff of six DNA analysts are invited to a state facility to continue training in a “supportive environment.” 

“I know they feel there have been some challenges, and they aren’t confident in the work of some of our analysts that we have had in retraining,” interim Police Chief Brian Manley said. “Since they have been doing this for us, we want to respect their decision and respect their request.” 

Manley said Monday was the first time he had personally been notified of the gravity of the situation. 

“They have been in contact with some of our supervisors, but to be made aware of this level of concern, where they don’t want to move forward with four of our scientists, that is a new development,” he said.

Art Acevedo left town at an opportune time, one notices in passing. But it's worth mentioning that this failure in part stems from the now-Houston PD chief's relative inattention to and de-prioritization of most of his department's duties besides patrol, which he perennially proposed expanding to the detriment of all other aspects of the department's duties. In Houston, because of past scandals, the crime lab has already been taken away from the police department's purview, so at his new gig Chief Acevedo thankfully will be relieved of that responsibility. But the team he left behind in Austin must immediately shift its focus to all the non-patrol duties which have been neglected for so many years. That of necessity starts with the crime lab, and particularly the DNA division, but if it ends there, more such land mines will explode in the future. All the department's civilian support functions - from crime-scene techs to victim-support specialists - have for years been relegated to the back of the budget line.

In the meantime, the Austin City Council should seriously consider spinning off its crime lab the way Houston did, in compliance with recommendations from the National Academies of Sciences dating back to 2009 that crime labs should be independent and not controlled by police. That's in part because analysts can become agents of the police instead of independent scientific arbiters when they're embedded in a police department's organizational culture. But it's also because police departments seldom prioritize crime labs, not just in terms of management attention but also budgeting, leaving them under-resourced and often devoid of high-level scientific expertise. That's a big part of what happened at APD's DNA lab.

Grits should add, when I say "independent," that does NOT mean hand it off to the Travis County medical examiner, which has its own long history of tolerating questionable forensics and a too-cozy relationship with law enforcement that influences scientific judgments. Houston's crime lab with an independent board is the model to replicate.

Finally, the Austin DNA lab imbroglio arguably represents the nadir of Forensic Science Commission effectiveness, though this year they've worked doubletime playing catchup. Grits has praised the FSC when they do good work, but a bunch of these issues were raised in 2010 by Cecily Hamilton about the Austin lab and the FSC investigation gave them a pass. Recent events corroborate Hamilton's charges and seriously call into question whether the FSC adequately investigated them. 

The issues Austin faces surrounding DNA mixtures are similarly being confronted at crime labs around the state. But Grits surely hopes the level of incompetence apparently at play in the Austin lab is mostly exceeded elsewhere. DNA is used in SO many cases these days - with half or more cases involving the more complicated mixture analysis that's been called into question in the last 18 months - that the legal task of undoing the damage nearly boggles the mind. 

Now consider this: The 2009 NAS report considered DNA evidence the gold standard of forensics and focused more on the non-scientific nature of nearly all other types of forensic evidence, from fingerprint analysis to hair-and-fiber to ballistics to bite marks. DNA mixture evidence may be a mess, but so are many other types forensic evidence used every day in Texas and American courts.  You can put a person in a lab coat but that doesn't make what comes out of their mouth science.

The nation since the election been grappling with the rise of "fake news." But fake science, pseudoscience, whatever you want  to call it, has been embedded in American courts for decades, harming more people, certainly, than any climate-change denier has to date. 

It makes you wonder: How in heaven's name can this much error with such grave consequences have been tolerated and justified by the justice system for so long? We need forensic analysis and Grits continues to think some forensic disciplines are useful. But being useful doesn't make them science, which is a pretension designed to exaggerate the credibility of analysts and overstate the certainty with which jurors and other stakeholders interpret state testimony about physical evidence.

MORE: The Statesman reports that Austin is no longer even trying to reopen its DNA lab.