Mediaboss Marketing

CSPD's crime lab is run by retired CSPD officer Shelley Weber. Weber holds a casting of a shoe from a crime scene on Wednesday, July 5, 2017. (Photo by Jerilee Bennett, The Gazette)

It's hard today to commit a crime without leaving evidence.

Advances in technology have made shoeprints, palm impressions, firearm rifling and bodily fluids indispensable to sleuths. While police officers collect the clues, it's crime analysts who make it useful.

Inside the Colorado Springs Police Department's and El Paso County Sheriff's Office's Metro Crime Lab, forensics steal the show.

DNA is king.

"Because you can't see it, we do a lot of testing to see if it's there," lab supervisor Shelley Weber said.

The best thing about DNA is it lingers.

Law enforcement agencies across the country in recent years have been touting solving decades-old cold cases because of microscopic evidence left on materials long forgotten in storage. Colorado Springs is no different.

Pubic hair and other material gathered by the original detectives following the 1976 rape and murder of an Antlers hotel housekeeper were resubmitted for testing in 2009. It ultimately led to the identification and conviction of Robert Baillie.

During Baillie's trial, retired police detective Dwight Haverkorn testified, "I honestly don't know if we had even heard of DNA in 1976."

Today, it's harder for criminals to hide.

Even a fired bullet can be traced back to a source or linked to multiple crimes. Testing for it is one of the more enjoyable jobs analysts get to do.

Technicians will shoot confiscated weapons into a nine-foot tank filled with nearly 600 gallons of water and match the bullet's grooves to those collected from crime scenes. Firearms are like snowflakes and fingerprints, Weber explained; each has a unique design.

The process was used recently to help link a group of teens believed to be behind a string of 10 armed robberies to the February killing of local liquor store owner Donat Herr. One of the culprits, Phinehas Daniels, also reportedly stole a car and fired at people during a pursuit. That bullet was determined to have come from the same gun that was used to kill Herr, court documents said.

Daniels faces first-degree murder; three others have been named related to the shooting and police are searching for a fourth.

Even though the lab handles only evidence from major crimes, like homicides and sex assaults, analysts are always "kept hopping," Weber said.

In addition to DNA and firearm testing, the lab processes drugs and latent prints. Crime scene investigation analysts collect some of it from scenes.

They spent a week bagging evidence after the Planned Parenthood shooting, Weber said. "There's no downtime. We always have another case waiting."

One test that doesn't prove easy, especially in Colorado, is matching fingerprints.

Colorado is dry, so fingerprints often evaporate before they can be collected, latent print examiner Amanda Kimball said, a problem that visiting analysts from Florida frequently say they're relieved they don't have.

"You don't find fingerprints very often," Kimball said.

But even when prints are available, it doesn't mean connecting them to a suspect will be as easy as on TV shows.

Kimball said she has pulled prints from bloody grocery bags and used condom wrappers, but running them through the state's database in search of a match can take 30 minutes to hours. And it doesn't end with a single suspect, but rather a list of potential "candidates" identified by a number, not a name.

Technicians narrow the potentials to a single candidate and conduct physical side-by-side comparisons to confirm a match. Success is usually dependent on the culprit already having been in trouble; otherwise, it's likely their fingerprints won't be on file.

Forensics isn't perfect.

Sometimes the test results are inconclusive or the evidence just isn't there, but that's OK, Weber said. It's not always about getting a definitive answer - though the testing often does produce one.

"It gives officers a place to start asking questions," Weber said.

See the article here:
Colorado Springs crime lab helps turn evidence into convictions - Colorado Springs Gazette