When Austin Shepherd began working at the Columbus Police Department’s forensic lab, he ran it out of the back of a 1984 Buick.
Now, 12 years later, the director of the Columbus Crime Lab has an office within walking distance from the CPD. It’s there that he and forensic chemist Claudette Gilman do fingerprint analysis, identify drugs and process other evidence from local crime scenes.
“We’re out there finding evidence to help the investigator put his case together,” Gilman said.
The Columbus Crime Lab serves the Columbus area and surrounding counties. It’s one of the only local crime labs in the state, according to Shepherd. Though major crimes like murder go to the state’s crime lab in Jackson, most run-of-the-mill cases — drug crimes, burglaries — end up at Shepherd’s lab where he and Gilman go through the evidence. The two of them handle dozens of cases a month and are the only full-time employees at the lab. Shepherd hopes the city will soon be able to hire two young trainees to take some of the load and eventually take over when Shepherd and Gilman leave.
“We’ve got to have people,” he said. “It’s a lot for just two.”
It’s not much like “C.S.I.” Shepherd said there’s very little chance that a firearm or shell casing will have a complete, usable fingerprint on it.
That doesn’t stop Shepherd from looking. His lab is equipped with several machines to help reveal prints. One is a super glue chamber, a large box that converts super glue into a gaseous substance that reacts with the humidity in the chamber to reveal fingerprints on non-porous evidence like firearms and soda cans.
Even with Shepherd’s technology, it’s difficult to get a usable print, he said. There’s a less than 10 percent chance of retrieving a usable print from a weapon, he said. Even when usable prints do appear, they have to match prints already in the database for them to be of use when it comes to catching criminals. Shepherd’s fingerprint database contains 29,000 names. When he started out, there were about 400, he said.
Drug testing
Down the hall from where fingerprints are processed, Gilman mans the drug lab. Last month she ran 755 tests for about 60 cases, she said. Gilman measures the drugs, examines them through a microscope and identifies them.
She compares it to doing a puzzle, and loves that she never knows quite what to expect from whatever she’s testing.
“You could look at (a substance) and go, ‘This is just a simple marijuana case’ and it’s not,” Gilman said.
Peering through a microscope at a “green leaf plant material”, she points out the spiky brown hairs, invisible to the naked eye. It’s one of the characteristics she looks for when trying to identify marijuana.
These kinds of tests are called presumptive tests, she said. She can’t technically label something a particular drug just by observing it herself.
There are multiple ways to positively identify a drug. Gilman can run powder through the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer, a machine which breaks down and identifies chemicals in a certain substance. She said its a process that usually takes about 20 minutes. She can also put marijuana in test tubes and add chemicals — duquenois levine, hydrochloric acid and chloroform in equal parts — to see if the chemicals turn a different color. Pale blue means she has marijuana.
She most often finds marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines and synthetic drugs. She’s seen heroin a few times, as well as flakka, a drug similar to bath salts. Gilman also sees a lot of fake drugs, which dealers try to pass off as real to buyers.
In the job, Gilman has also seen drugs specifically designed and packaged to target certain buyers. She’s seen pink meth meant to appeal to women and other drugs with cartoon characters stamped on them to get children’s attention. “It’s kind of heartbreaking,” she said.
“You’re killing off your drug clients so you need more drug clients,” she said. “So you’re starting them off at a young age and getting them addicted for life.”
Cell phone data
In addition to fingerprinting and drug identification, the Crime Lab has equipment to get data from cell phones. Phones are basically computers that track their owners’ every move, Shepherd said. They can be invaluable pieces of evidence.
It’s possible for suspects to erase information from their phones remotely, however, which is why Shepherd keeps a Faraday cage in the Crime Lab. The cage blocks WiFi signals, making it impossible for suspects to tamper with the phones from far away. When the phone’s in the cage, Shepherd can put it into airplane mode and begin getting data from the phone.
The lab also has a software system that retrieves cell phone data using cell towers. With that program, Shepherd can see where people may have been when making calls and even track who that person was talking to.
Shepherd’s hope is that the Columbus Crime Lab will train the next generation of forensic scientists to handle local cases. He specifically wants young people from the surrounding area.
No experience is necessary, he added, just a background in chemistry.
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