Crime Lab’s Experts Put Adversity Behind Them

It’s been a long journey back to credibility for the Sheriff’s Department crime lab staff, who have spent the past two years fighting to overcome what amounted to a public relations nightmare.

The low point came in July 1997 when a team of Ventura County defense attorneys argued for dismissal of 673 drunk-driving cases after revelations the lab was not certified to handle blood-alcohol tests.

In the end, only seven cases were dropped. But while the problems boiled down to mistakes made by one criminalist in the lab’s alcohol unit, the reputation of every scientist had suffered.

“It’s sad that a lot of employees were colored by the action of just one person,” said Sheriff’s Cmdr. Dick Purnell, who oversees the lab. “What people heard about was one small portion of the lab, involving just one person. And while all that was happening, we had people in other areas working hard, solving cases.”

Today, the lab’s 20 forensic scientists and supervisors say they have grown stronger through their adversity.

Their latest project is an effort to pass a strenuous national accreditation process that would make it one of only seven in California approved by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.

Earlier this month the lab was given approval to open the doors to its $215,000 DNA unit. The lab is already up and running, working on samples for four sexual-assault cases.

Also, $175,000 has been spent on updating equipment. To ease the burden on overworked personnel, five additional employees are on the way. And raises for current personnel, who are the second-lowest paid criminalists in the state, also have been approved.

“All the changes wouldn’t have come without the extreme dedication of this staff,” said laboratory manager Renee Artman, tears welling in her eyes. “Dedication--this is a word I cannot assign a dollar amount to. It’s invaluable.”

Artman, a 14-year member of the lab staff, was named head of all forensic services last month--a position reinstated after an eight-year absence. The position of forensic lab manager had been eliminated in 1991. Until Artman’s appointment, the bulk of supervisory duties fell to sworn sheriff’s personnel, usually a captain with no technical training.

“I think the primary goal was to put someone with a scientific background in charge of the lab,” said Artman, a Polish immigrant with a master’s degree in pharmacy who began training in the lab as a part-time employee after moving to the United States more than 14 years ago.

“I think maybe it was sometimes difficult on [the captains] to make some of the decisions about things they may not understand,” she added.

Despite the work to improve the lab, Public Defender Brian Vogel remains unimpressed by the changes.

Vogel was one of two main defense attorneys who sought to have numerous drunk-driving cases dropped following problems with the blood-alcohol unit. Vogel maintains it does not matter how much money and work go into improving the lab, and that all forensic evidence should go to an outside lab--not one run by the sheriff.

“It’s a mistake to allow law enforcement to be in control of what should be impartial science,” Vogel said. “I’m very concerned about that. There’s no way to know in this case what the quality of work is like over there. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is.”

Even before the lab’s problems became public two years ago, officials knew the lab needed improvements. Authorities became concerned following the O.J. Simpson murder trial, Sheriff Bob Brooks said.

“It was really the first highly publicized case where it was the lab on trial, and not the suspect,” Brooks said. “It was becoming a new growth industry for defense attorneys to attack labs. So we began asking how bulletproof our lab was.”

Meeting Spurred Plan to Upgrade Lab

Then came the negative attention surrounding the blood-alcohol unit within the local department’s own lab shortly after the Simpson trial. In the aftermath, lab improvements became a priority.

“Probably the fact that we were all over the newspaper had some influence,” Artman said. “I wished it had never happened. But some of the changes were probably a result of that situation.”

The concerns prompted a meeting between lab supervisors and sheriff’s officials, including Chief Deputy Richard Rodriguez, who oversees the lab’s annual $947,000 budget.

Among the problems cited: low morale, poor pay, heavy workloads, an overcrowded lab and outdated equipment.

Hammered out was a plan of action to make the lab one of the top in the state. The county has a long history of using science to go after criminal convictions.

Ventura County was the first in the state to successfully use DNA to obtain a murder conviction. Authorities in 1989 suspected a woman named Lynda Axell was responsible for a hamburger stand worker’s death. Hair samples sent to a New York lab proved that long, dark strands of hair clutched in the victim’s hand belonged to Axell.

In fact, Ventura County has been using scientific sleuthing to solve crimes for more than 30 years.

It began with one scientist in 1957 working from a 20- by 30-foot basement office underneath the old Sheriff’s Department headquarters on Poli Street.

Deputy Hank Carillo, who joined the department a few months after the lab began, remembers the ripple of excitement the tiny office caused.

“Boy, we thought we were uptown then,” said Carillo, 68, now a retired lieutenant who works part time as a recruiter for the department. “Before that, we had to send everything to the FBI or the Department of Justice. Then, to have our own crime lab, it was a big deal. . . . Looking back on what we have now, though, it’s mind-boggling how advanced we’ve become.”

Long before any labs were handling such sophisticated tasks as matching DNA samples, most of the county lab’s work focused on detecting alcohol and drugs in blood samples for DUI and narcotics cases.

Hopes for New Lab Tied to Bond Vote

Over 30 years the work has expanded dramatically, and become amazingly high-tech. Although a lot of the office toil still involves drug and alcohol analysis, much of the lab’s space is taken up by criminalists in search of microscopic evidence to solve rape and homicide cases.

“At one point, we were lucky to identify blood as animal or human,” said senior criminalist Ed Jones, a 16-year veteran of the lab. “Now we can identify the person, the one guy.”

In 1979, the lab moved into a 17,000-square-foot office at the county Government Center. But 20 years later, the once spacious laboratory is crowded with staff members, computers and other sophisticated equipment.

For an office where a chief concern is contamination of evidence, adequate working space is critical. It’s also a requirement for accreditation, officials said.

Plans are already in the works to build a 50,000-square-foot lab, Rodriguez said. To pay for the $1.5-million construction cost, the department hopes to take advantage of a bond initiative expected to go before California voters next year. The initiative would set aside funds to improve the state’s crime laboratories.

Department officials, however, are not waiting for the new building before tackling other improvements.

The first change came a few months after the uproar in the blood-alcohol unit. Artman, then acting manager for the lab, decided a new policy would mandate that at least two people should be certified to handle blood-alcohol testing at all times.

Much of the lab’s problems began after its only forensic alcohol supervisor retired, on short notice, after nearly 20 years with the lab, Artman said.

“We were left in a bad situation,” Artman said. “When he retired, we did not have someone who could take over his responsibilities and run the program.”

The lab scrambled to certify another scientist, but the process took too long and the lab’s certification for blood-alcohol testing expired, Artman said. In the meantime, blood-alcohol samples analyzed by a different criminalist at the lab were found to be inaccurate. The inaccuracies prompted lab officials to fire the criminalist. And the district attorney’s office, in the middle of prosecuting hundreds of DUI cases, was made aware of the problems, Artman said.

“My attitude and my philosophy is that we always try our best,” Artman said. “And honesty is our primary goal. We don’t change the facts and we don’t hide anything.”

Changes Geared Toward Accreditation

Today, three scientists are certified forensic alcohol supervisors. As an added precaution, many of the criminalists and lab technicians are cross-trained to work in multiple units.

Every other change in the lab focused around preparing for national accreditation, Artman said. Only one in three labs in the country bear such a distinction, including labs in Orange and San Bernardino counties. It is also such accreditation that helped restore the image of the Los Angeles Police Department’s lab after a barrage of negative press during the O.J. Simpson trial.

“This is a kind of validation that you are doing things above acceptable standards,” Purnell said. “You can walk into court and say, ‘This is what I did and this is what’s accepted by everyone in the nation.’ ”

It’s still a year or two before the lab will be ready for inspection by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors. A lot of preparation work remains.

It’s a process that has meant updating more than 900 lab guidelines and policies and even more training manuals. The undertaking has consumed hundreds of hours from lab employees--most of whom, as salaried employees, went without overtime pay. And it was all done while maintaining an already overburdened workload.

“I could come in at various hours, on Saturday, whenever,” Purnell said. “And their cars are sitting in the parking lot. They’ve just pulled together and worked so hard just because they feel it’s important.”

To ensure that new and improved procedures are strictly adhered to, the lab is hiring a quality control supervisor, dedicated exclusively to ensuring new guidelines are followed and dated policies are replaced.

Four additional criminologists will also be hired soon to absorb some of the increased workload brought on by a growing county, increasingly sophisticated technology and the new DNA lab. The recently approved pay raise should also help recruit better, more talented job candidates, lab officials said.

To remain current in a world of ever-changing technology, new lab rules dictate equipment must be replaced every five years, Artman said. Some of the more antiquated tools have already been tossed aside. Others more than a decade old will soon be rotated out.

Pride Centers on New DNA Unit

Such a turnover of equipment will be costly, Purnell acknowledged. He added, however, that what newer, better, faster technology saves in employee manpower makes the added purchases worthwhile.

“Some of the older equipment took a lot of time to maintain and run,” Purnell said. “Any time you can save so an employee can do something else, that saves on personnel power and saves on salary expenses.”

Amid all the changes, the lab’s new DNA unit stands out as a symbol of pride and joy. Last month the lab received official notice of certification from the Florida-based National Forensic Science Technology Center.

The new lab means scientists can run DNA samples faster and for a fraction of the cost a private lab charges for analysis--about $34 per sample versus a private lab’s $625 price tag. Investigators run as many as 120 samples a year.

Although the lab was not necessary for national accreditation, Michael Parigian, supervising criminalist for the DNA section, said it goes a long way in adding to the lab’s clout within the crime lab community.

“This is just one extra step, something a little extra we felt was important to have,” Parigian said.

Looking back at all the problems and achievements at the lab over the past 24 months, Sheriff’s Department officials say they feel nothing but pride for their staff of criminologists.

“Our basic commitment departmentally is to go for the highest objective standard out there in the industry. That’s what the lab has been working toward,” Brooks said.

“Out of the ashes, I don’t know if it’s a phoenix,” Rodriguez added. “But a lot of good things have come.”