Minneapolis crime lab gets promoted

Five years and three police chiefs ago, the Minneapolis Police Department started the painstakingly tedious process of earning a prestigious international accreditation for its crime lab tucked away on City Hall's third floor.

It's not that lab workers weren't following proper standards before when they tried to identify a homicide suspect through fingerprints or examined a computer to find an Internet criminal.

But case files didn't need to be nearly as detailed back then, and the lab had no written guidelines for important functions such as room security and chain of custody for evidence.

All that and more has changed.

When the lab officially receives its accreditation today from the American Society of Crime Lab Directors, it can claim to meet more than 400 strict standards that will be monitored in-house by a full-time quality assurance coordinator.

Although 92 federal, regional, state and county crime labs have similar accreditation, Minneapolis and Columbus, Ohio, are the only city police departments on the list.

All the new standards had to be in place for six months before examiners came to Minneapolis to approve the lab for accreditation.

"When people from the crime lab are witnesses during trials, we point out the accreditation and how hard it is to get," said Hennepin County Deputy Attorney Pat Diamond. "It adds to their credibility, and it should."

The crime lab rarely gets public recognition, but its meticulous behind-the-scenes work is crucial to prosecuting cases. The popular "CSI" shows on television frequently portray forensic scientists at a scene placing small, yellow cards with a number on evidence, but the job can entail a montage of duties.

The real scientists examine fingerprints through a variety of methods, analyze blood splatter, tire and footwear tracks, and do ballistics tests. They also reconstruct crime scenes and do painstaking searches of computers, cell phones and vehicles. The lab's 30 scientists, technicians and analysts are a mix of officers and civilians, many of whom have four-year forensic science degrees.

The 6,000-square-foot lab, which has a $1.6 million dollar budget, is pretty nondescript for a place where things happen that can mean the difference between acquittal and conviction, imprisonment or freedom.

It has lots of ordinary looking desks with computers, some video equipment, a photo lab and chemical testing areas. But it also has tight security. Before visitors or officers are buzzed in through the lab's security door, they must sign in and state their business. Stricter procedures were one of the standards for accreditation.

Unlike some states, Minnesota doesn't require crime labs to be accredited. In 2004, the Police Department began seeking the American Society of Crime Lab Directors' less stringent accreditation, called Legacy, which requires a law enforcement agency to meet the majority of 145 standards.

The Hennepin County Sheriff's Office, Target Corp.'s forensic lab and the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension's labs in St. Paul and Bemidji have Legacy accreditation. But then Minneapolis decided to go further.

"Although it was going to be much more work, we thought it would be better to get ahead of the game and get the higher accreditation," said Lt. Tami Aker, who oversees the lab. "We were also only a few years removed from the many problems uncovered at the crime lab in Houston, which made national news."

Details, details, details

The most significant change is the documentation required for each case. At a homicide crime scene, for example, lab workers will still fill out an initial report about what evidence they processed. But they will now be required to do additional, detailed reports on any lab work performed on the evidence, including the results.

"The new standards add about 15 percent more work for each case," said Emily Wemlinger, the lab's quality assurance coordinator and photo lab supervisor. "There was one veteran in the lab who didn't like all the extra work. But then he started doing some work on a cold case from 40 years ago and saw the lack of documentation. He now tells me that he really likes the new system."

The accreditation also requires annual competency tests for workers, peer reviews on certain lab procedures, and internal and external lab audits.

One group sometimes frustrated with the new lab procedures is defense attorneys, joked Bill Hinz, the lab's supervisor. With all the documentation in case files, he said attorneys are having a difficult time finding a potential slip-up.

Aker said she is proud of the lab's commitment to earning the accreditation. She admits a lot of their work isn't glamorous, and laughs at the television portrayal of crime lab personnel on "CSI" shows.

"You see them drive up in Hummers and wearing mini-skirts," she said. "We wear cargo pants and drive Chevy vans."

David Chanen • 612-673-4465