Nation’s First and Only Independent Crime Laboratory System

The below arti­cle is sure to come as a sur­prise to defense attor­neys in Arizona. For the longest time, the Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab has argued that they are an “inde­pen­dent crime lab­o­ra­tory”, when in fact they are part of the state police department.

Granted there are many inde­pen­dent foren­sic lab­o­ra­to­ries around the coun­try, but they are claim­ing to the first “inde­pen­dent lab­o­ra­tory system.”

Original arti­cle posted here:

The Nation’s First and Only Independent Crime Laboratory System

Bode Technology and Integrated Forensic Laboratories, Inc. have final­ized a land­mark agree­ment to cre­ate the nation’s first and only inde­pen­dent crim­i­nal foren­sic test­ing lab­o­ra­tory system.

Criminal foren­sic test­ing in the United States has been his­tor­i­cally dom­i­nated by publicly-funded lab­o­ra­to­ries, includ­ing city and county labs, state lab sys­tems, and fed­eral lab sys­tems. A num­ber of con­cerns regard­ing many unac­cred­ited crime lab­o­ra­to­ries have been raised by The National Academy of Science’s Committee on Identifying the Needs of the Forensic Science Community in the report, “Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward.”

“We are pleased to cre­ate an inde­pen­dent, pri­vate crime lab­o­ra­tory sys­tem offer­ing law enforce­ment agen­cies another choice for their foren­sic ser­vices require­ments,” said Howard Safir, CEO of Bode Technology and for­mer New York City Police Commissioner. He also noted: “The foren­sic ser­vices we offer in our lab­o­ra­to­ries includ­ing DNA analy­sis, foren­sic biol­ogy, blood alco­hol con­tent test­ing, fin­ger­print­ing, firearms and tool­mark analy­sis, drug chem­istry, and fire debris analy­ses are per­formed using processes accred­ited by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board.”

“We believe that offer­ing law enforce­ment agen­cies an addi­tional option to process crime scene evi­dence will speed up the pro­cess­ing of sam­ples and ensure the work is per­formed with qual­i­fied per­son­nel and pro­ce­dures” stated Barry Watson, President of Bode Technology. “We offer many of our ser­vices with turn-around times of a few weeks and options to per­form many ser­vices in a few days, help­ing to speed jus­tice for vic­tims of crime.”

“IFL is excited to form this new lab sys­tem with Bode Technology. Bode is a national leader in foren­sic DNA test­ing and related prod­ucts,” said Ron Fazio, IFL’s President. “Together, we can bring an unprece­dented new inde­pen­dent, accred­ited, crim­i­nal lab­o­ra­tory test­ing option for all mem­bers of the jus­tice system.”