Cops Fight to Keep Control of Crime Lab

Even after the report by the National Academy of Sciences rec­om­mend­ing that foren­sic labs be inde­pen­dent of police and prosecutor’s offices, those groups still fight to give not give up con­trol (and thereby influ­ence the results of foren­sic analy­sis) of crime labs.

D.C.‘s top foren­sic sci­en­tist has been trans­ferred out of the police depart­ment amid an increas­ingly bit­ter con­flict for con­trol of the city’s crime laboratory.

William Vosburgh was brought in amid much fan­fare to assist con­struc­tion of a long-delayed, $140 mil­lion crime lab­o­ra­tory and to build a top-flight foren­sic sci­ence pro­gram to match it. But after months of con­flict with police depart­ment brass, he’s being “detailed” to the mayor’s office, sources with inti­mate knowl­edge of the con­tro­versy told The Examiner.

At the heart of the mat­ter is whether the crime lab will be inde­pen­dent or under the author­ity of the police depart­ment. Vosburgh has argued inter­nally that the lab has to be inde­pen­dent to pre­vent police from influ­enc­ing foren­sic tests; his boss, Assistant Chief Peter Newsham, wants the lab to report to him.

Both men tes­ti­fied in a hear­ing before the D.C. Council ear­lier this month.

Newsham declined com­ment after the hear­ing. Vosburgh said reports of his con­flict with Newsham were “no more than usual for any office.”

If cops and prosecutor’s fight this bad to keep con­trol of “sci­en­tific truth”, shouldn’t you won­der why? Seriously. Administratively sci­en­tists are about as easy/fun to super­vise as a herd of cats. There must be some unseen pay­off for the police and pros­e­cu­tors. Is it siphoned fund­ing, empire build­ing, or the abil­ity to manip­u­late foren­sic test­ing to fur­ther their own agendas?

Whatever the case maybe, the pub­lic should start look­ing closely, and start elect­ing pub­lic offi­cials that are more con­cerned with unbi­ased sci­en­tific results, and less con­cerned with police case clear­ance rates, and the num­ber of W’s in the porosecutor’s win/loss record.

Read the whole arti­cle in the Washington Examiner.