S.F. Police Lab Worker Accused of Drug Testing Fraud : Law enforcement: Technician was targeted by internal sting after reports that evidence samples were not properly examined. Defense attorneys say many convictions may be affected.

It was a normal day’s work for police laboratory technician Allison Lancaster: A steady stream of officers brought in suspected narcotics seized from drug users for her to test.

What she didn’t know was that she was the target of a sting by her own department.

Tipped that drug samples were not being tested properly, detectives gave her bags of harmless powder labeled as narcotics. Lancaster fell for the trap, authorities said, allegedly skipping required tests and identifying the planted samples as opiates and cocaine.

The reports of allegedly fraudulent testing at the San Francisco Police Department’s laboratory have outraged defense attorneys and called into question as many as 1,000 drug convictions that relied on Lancaster’s findings.

“The integrity of our department has been compromised and we’re going to address it,” said San Francisco Police Chief Tony Ribera. “Any time you have the human factor involved, there are going to be times when the public trust is violated.”

To some defense attorneys, the San Francisco case is just the latest in a string of scandals involving fraudulent tests by police departments across the country--including the use of falsified blood and fingerprint evidence.

“It’s a widespread and endemic problem in our criminal justice system and it’s not a surprise to me that you’d find it in San Francisco,” said Los Angeles lawyer Barry Tarlow. “Traditionally, jurors have been taught that fingerprints don’t lie. However, liars do take fingerprints.”

In West Virginia, a police chemist whose lab tests helped convict hundreds of criminal defendants in two states over 13 years was charged last month with perjury and tampering with evidence. More than 70 cases are under review and two men, one convicted of murder and the other of rape, have been released.

In New York, a state trooper pleaded guilty to perjury two years ago for faking fingerprint evidence in four high-profile cases near Ithaca. His admission called into question convictions in dozens of other cases.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s lab had its own problems in 1989 when ballistics tests incorrectly identified the gun of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Rickey Ross as the weapon that killed three prostitutes. Ross was later cleared and prosecutors began using their own experts to verify the lab’s results.

In San Francisco, defense lawyers said the bogus drug testing is certain to result in a flock of appeals from inmates seeking to have their convictions overturned. Some are expected to file civil rights lawsuits seeking damages from the city for false imprisonment.

Lancaster, a five-year lab employee, has been suspended from her job without pay and is under criminal investigation by the department. Charges could include falsely certifying evidence in court, an offense similar to perjury.

The Police Department and the office of Dist. Atty. Arlo Smith have begun poring through years of records to determine what cases Lancaster worked on. Because most evidence is destroyed six months after trial, most of the confiscated substances cannot be retested.

“We estimate that it would be roughly 1,000 cases that we filed,” Smith said. “I don’t know how many will ultimately be affected. We are moving rapidly to make sure they are identified.”

The testing controversy follows on the heels of a series of high-profile scandals in the San Francisco Police Department, including alleged sexual harassment by Chief Ribera, the case of an officer who pleaded no contest to illegally accessing computer records on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League and the firing of former Chief Richard Hongisto for ordering officers to steal critical newspapers from street racks.

But Ribera, seeking to prevent further erosion of the department’s credibility, said he moved quickly to investigate the allegations against Lancaster by a co-worker.

“The mere fact that it was called to our attention by somebody who works in the process shows it is certainly not accepted conduct,” Ribera said. “I don’t think anyone on this Police Department wants to send innocent people to jail.”

At the police lab, Lancaster handled thousands of pieces of evidence a year but specialized primarily in blood work, conducting drug tests when there was an overflow or when she worked weekends--as she did at the time of the sting earlier this month. Blood test evidence is kept longer and her work on those cases has not been called into question.

During her five years with the lab, she was responsible for about 1,000 drug tests that led to convictions. In most of them, the defendants pleaded guilty. But San Francisco Public Defender Jeff Brown said it is unlikely most would have pleaded guilty without the police lab’s finding that they possessed narcotics.

“They pleaded guilty on the basis of the statement by the crime lab that the substance tested positively,” Brown said. “If that has been secured by intentional wrongdoing, that seriously affects the plea of guilty.”

How each of the 1,000 cases is resolved will depend in part on what other evidence prosecutors can muster. Smith may attempt to uphold some convictions by presenting the arresting officers as scientific experts on the identification of narcotics. He may also argue that guilty pleas should stand because the defendants knew they possessed or were selling illegal drugs.

On occasion, Ribera said, drug users from the suburbs come to San Francisco and get taken in by con artists who sell them substances such as powdered milk balls instead of rock cocaine.

It is illegal to sell such things but not to possess a harmless substance and believe it is illegal. In some cases the lab clears suspects if it finds a substance is not illegal.

“The dope testing is the crucial piece of evidence,” Brown said. “The person could think he has dope and the police could think he has dope. But if it isn’t dope, the case falls apart.”