Phoenix Crime Lab Labor Relations Tension Escalates

An arti­cle in the Arizona Republic indi­cates the prior accu­sa­tions relat­ing to the qual­ity of work per­formed at the Phoenix PD Crime Lab is more polit­i­cally moti­vated, based on a union try­ing to keep a group of employ­ees from leaving.

Stay tuned.

A Phoenix labor-relations board is sched­uled to hear tes­ti­mony Wednesday from police crime-lab employ­ees after the union rep­re­sent­ing crime-scene spe­cial­ists raised ques­tions about mis­man­aged evi­dence and super­vi­sor misconduct.

The five unfair-labor-practice charges stemmed from a woman who claimed super­vi­sors wrong­fully blamed her for fil­ing inac­cu­rate reports on 18 inves­ti­ga­tions since 2007, includ­ing homi­cide cases.

Since her reas­sign­ment ear­lier this win­ter, Ana Lucero — a crime-scene spe­cial­ist who worked for more than eight years pro­cess­ing evi­dence for Phoenix homi­cide detec­tives — claimed the lab was so dis­or­ga­nized that it could put crim­i­nal cases at risk. Lab lead­ers denied the claims.

The Phoenix Employment Relations Board sched­uled four days of hear­ings to col­lect facts from Lucero and lab super­vi­sors. But her union, Local 2960 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, could agree with the city to with­draw the charges and can­cel the hearings.

Meanwhile, Phoenix police detec­tives con­tin­ued with an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into crime-lab employ­ees as the depart­ment probes alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, rather than the func­tions of the crime lab itself.

No room for error

Phoenix Cmdr. Harry Markley, who took com­mand of the crime lab in June, said he didn’t know of any employee errors that could jeop­ar­dize crim­i­nal cases.

He added that lab super­vi­sors closely mon­i­tor the work of 38 non-sworn crime-scene spe­cial­ists to main­tain a high level of accred­i­ta­tion and to ensure pros­e­cu­tors receive accu­rate evi­dence to move for­ward with cases.

“In some fields there might be an accept­able error rate,” Markley said. “There’s none in this field. We dis­cover our errors because we do the reviews.”

The crime lab com­pleted 40,357 requests for sci­en­tific analy­sis in 2009, includ­ing those for DNA, fin­ger­prints and tox­i­col­ogy. The num­ber marked a 35 per­cent work increase from the pre­vi­ous year, when the lab com­pleted 29,884 requests.

Markley added that the total num­ber of back­logged cases is going down, though the lab con­tin­ues to oper­ate with the same num­ber of employees.

In 2007, the crime lab reported a back­log of 15,895 cases, Phoenix records show. By 2009, the num­ber dropped to 10,982.

Lab com­plaints

Lucero and her AFSCME Local 2960 rep­re­sen­ta­tives claimed crime-lab staff mem­bers have enough time on their hands to make pop­corn and watch movies on city time, to take long breaks at Starbucks at City Hall and to take two-hour lunches.

Such com­plaints came out months after Lucero was first dis­ci­plined, accord­ing to crime-lab lead­ers. They said the com­plaints reflected the stance of a hand­ful of dis­grun­tled employ­ees rather than a per­va­sive prob­lem among the lab’s 147 employees.

According to dis­ci­pli­nary records, Lucero’s super­vi­sors warned her mul­ti­ple times last year to reduce her report back­log. She admit­ted she had more than 100 unfin­ished reports dat­ing back to 2006.

One super­vi­sor char­ac­ter­ized Lucero’s lack of detail on her reports as a “lack of will­ing­ness to take the ini­tia­tive to ver­ify the accu­racy of state­ments,” includ­ing miss­ing or mis­char­ac­ter­ized evi­dence col­lected at crime scenes.

Frank Piccioli, a Local 2960 rep­re­sen­ta­tive, said Lucero’s dis­ci­pline and reas­sign­ment to a police depart­ment records office incor­rectly por­trayed her as lazy and incompetent.

In January, the union filed a civil law­suit notice of claim with Phoenix, alleg­ing Lucero has been “severely, con­tin­u­ously and repeat­edly harassed and retal­i­ated against” since she became a Local 2960 stew­ard more than a year ago.

Members leav­ing union

A group of crime-scene spe­cial­ists filed a peti­tion with Phoenix to leave Local 2960.

The peti­tion, filed in July, would reclas­sify the city’s crime-scene spe­cial­ists under a new pro­fes­sional rank­ing that some feel is long over­due, based on the highly tech­ni­cal foren­sics work. The new rank­ing would enable crime-scene spe­cial­ists to become part of a new union.

Local 2960 responded by fil­ing its first unfair-labor com­plaint with the Phoenix Employment Relations Board in August. Four other unfair-labor charges followed.

John Charland, the attor­ney rep­re­sent­ing the peti­tion­ers, said the process — which goes to hear­ing in March — has been marked by accu­sa­tions and attacks.

“It seemed so straight­for­ward that these peo­ple were not prop­erly cat­e­go­rized, and that it should be adjusted,” Charland said. “I did not antic­i­pate I was going to get into this type of dog­fight. But now that I’m in it, I’m going to fight it out.”