Chron: HPD report details latest crime lab problems
Last Friday (the day that damning news often goes to die), the Chronicle ran an important story by Roma Khanna on the latest problems with the HPD Crime Lab. Here are some choice excerpts (although we strongly encourage readers to follow the link and read the entire story):
Months before the troubled Houston crime lab shuttered its DNA division for a second time, analysts and a supervisor warned investigators of continuing problems, including contamination, questionable procedures, and lost evidence, according to a police investigative report obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
So serious were the issues that DNA section leader Vanessa Nelson described the division as "clearly out of control." She told Houston Police Department internal affairs officers to consider halting DNA testing altogether in September — four months before police management made the move to close it.
[snip]
The internal affairs investigation started in response to allegations that Nelson and two midlevel supervisors had improperly coached DNA analysts on a routine skills test in August. Investigators concluded managers indeed had discussed the proficiency test, in violation of policy, and recommended that Nelson and a midlevel manager be fired.
Nelson resigned in January to avoid termination, and the Texas Department of Public Safety hired her to lead the DNA division of its McAllen crime lab. Attempts to reach her Thursday were unsuccessful. Nelson's departure left Houston's DNA division without a supervisor and forced HPD to suspend DNA testing for the second time in six years.
In the course of investigating the cheating allegations, Nelson and others in the DNA division told officers of other troubles at the lab, including attempts to misrepresent the chain of custody on an evidence sample and orders for analysts to do work they were not trained to perform.
The analysts' comments depict a DNA division far different from that police management described as reformed and poised for excellence in 2006 after it earned national accreditation for the first time and resumed DNA testing after an interruption of more than three years.
PR sometimes gets ahead of facts in MayorWhiteChiefHurtt's Houston.
Chronicle staff were kind enough to post the PDF of HPD's internal report (11 MB) to Chron.com at the request of several bloggers. From my reading of it, Khanna's conclusions certainly seem sound. One particularly damning aspect of the report concerns the "coaching" in which some analysts, according to their testimony, felt pressured to change their conclusions in an evaluative situation. What if a man's life were on the line, instead of simply a question on a proficiency exam? Would there have been pressure to deliver a certain answer? Would there have been competent analysis period? This was pretty sober reading, especially after all the positive PR that had previously emanated about the new and improved crime lab.
In Khanna's story, Irma Rios (the crime lab's current director) assures that everything is fine, that problems have been identified and corrected, and that these are expected growing pains (everyone move along, nothing to see here). Unfortunately, this report makes the Rios Pollyanna routine hard to believe. Indeed, it leaves one wondering if MayorWhiteChiefHurtt have been any more effective than MayorBrownChiefBradford at managing the dysfunctional HPD crime lab.
Maybe the problems simply cannot be solved, and it's well past time to consider scrapping HPD's crime lab for an independent regional crime lab. Or maybe this latest crime lab scandal will convince Chief Hurtt he needs to run for DA a few years down the line!
What say you?
Posted by Kevin Whited @ 02/25/08 08:49 PM | Houston Miscellany | Print | Comments (4)
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