NEWPORT BEACH : City to Hire Civilian Crime Investigators

The city Civil Service Commission has approved job qualifications for a four-member Police Department division of civilian crime-scene investigators.

The qualifications were approved last week, and recruitment is expected to begin in about a month, Sgt. Andy Gonis said.

The new posts will be funded by eliminating, through attrition, the jobs of two sworn officers and a civilian community service officer. The three newly hired civilian crime scene investigators will have salaries ranging from $2,701 to $3,447 a month, and a senior crime scene analyst will earn $3,124 to $4,000 a month.

The investigators will specialize in collecting, preserving and analyzing physical evidence from crime scenes. The analyst will gather data and track crime trends, reporting on them to other officers, the community and city officials, and will maintain contacts with analysts in other cities to monitor regional trends.

For years, the city assigned three sworn detectives as crime scene investigators, until a 1993 budget cut forced the department to eliminate one position, according to a report by Capt. James Jacobs.