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>> She left me to discuss all the fun significant
issue comments.
At first I'd like to talk about the responses we got
to how people felt about the National Academy
of Sciences report.
Overall the responses were pretty positive
and taking a positive light on it, they're saying
that the National Academy
of Sciences report may strengthen our reporting
and help develop some consistency in the field,
will encourage certification of the laboratories
and of the individual examiners, may provide an impetus
for funding for other training opportunities
and for more research.
While it may impact some testimony it will hopefully
encourage individuals to qualify their testimony appropriately.
So overall the National Academy of Sciences reports seems
to be taken as a way to improve our field.
This was one of the comments that I loved,
I feel that trace evidence is one of the most powerful fields
in the forensic sciences and while,
yes we are...I am speaking to the choir right now we also need
to remember that trace evidence is not defined the same
for all people and all laboratory systems
and I think a lot of the comments that I'll be talking
about over the next couple
of minutes will relate to this specifically.
Some of the responses I got were a need for adequate funding,
a need to assess and report the significance of our findings,
to develop databases, to attempt to apply statistics
to the trace evidence disciplines and a need
for adequate collection and preservation of trace evidence.
Those were sort of what I summed
up as what people thought were the issues in our field today
and these are just some of the statements that I copied directly
from the survey relating to how people are phasing out some
of their trace units because of lack of funding,
they're feeling their restriction in the SOPs
and not able to get to the breadth
of all the trace evidence that may be out there and also some
of the frustration with the lack of knowledge
of the law enforcement who's collecting the evidence
or the criminal justice system, the lawyers who are using
that evidence in their court systems.
Specifically about the last two, the misunderstandings
of the people who are using our evidence or are collecting it,
that I think leads to the fact that we need to go out
and educate more, we need to continually talk to the people
who collect and who use our evidence and we also need
to talk to our...the people in our own laboratory systems
as one of the comments in the red shows there are people
in other units who are moving up into laboratory management
that don't understand trace evidence and part
of that is our fault, we need to make sure that people
in other disciplines really understand what we do
and we are working together with all our cases
so that they understand what their impact may be
on our evidence and what we can add to a case,
so as long as we are working together
as a whole community we are going
to better the trace evidence discipline and the comment
about the SOPs and how we may be being too narrow
in our SOP guideline writing, well that comes down to we need
to make sure that that we are allowing for good science
in our SOPs that we are not making it too narrow,
that we can actually show that we can expand
and do some unknowns and allow for that inner SOP writing
and that is again some of the education
between the trace analysts
and potentially the quality assurance managers
who are helping to write these guidelines.
There were answers that caused some concern, I'll put up a few
of these, that trace evidence is becoming obsolete,
hair comparisons in the traditional sense may be a thing
of the past, elimination of trace units in favor of DNA,
no one wants investigative information any more,
that the non-specificity
of the results makes the expensive operating trace unit
cost prohibitive and this particular lab will not replace
their trace examiner when he retires.
And then the local law enforcement seems to be trying
to collect and analyze evidence
at their police departments more frequently due
to the CSI effect and can create contamination problems.
These are all problems that I see in the field
and I think we need to work through more education
and outreach to prevent a lot of these things.
Some of the other issues that were written down,
one of them was there's a lack of a centralized forum in which
to exchange ideas and analytical techniques,
my response is we are here at a trace evidence symposium.
The lack of support and funding for further education
and social interaction with colleagues
from across the nation, again we're here
at a trace evidence symposium.
National Academy report and its findings, recommendations
such as association of error rates applies to trace evidence,
I think we are talking a lot about that in some
of the workshops and further panels that will be going
on this week, so when you are filling out your questionnaire
online survey at the end of this symposium,
please let us know how often do you want a trace evidence
symposium, right now the thought is for every two years,
so if that is going to be good for helping
to keep the impetus moving for building up trace evidence,
that's great, if you don't think we need it
as much we need to hear that.
I'm going to deal with some of the issues that...individually,
so for the lack of funding there was a lot of labs that said
that lack of money for instrumentation and personnel,
loss of trained personnel,
and then once the people retire the units lose that position
and that there's a need for specialized training
which is free or at minimal cost and these are some
of the specific points that people wrote.
Now part of what we've been able to do through the symposium is
to offer a lot of those workshops
and do some additional training, if there are things
that you need training in, let us know.
We can add workshops in future years towards that,
towards reaching those training goals.
Standardization of interpretation in data,
in report wording were some big issues as well.
However the majority of the respondents said
that they use the SWGMAT guidelines
and/or AST of standards even
without mandated standardization.
So there are guidelines and standards out there
that are being used
and interpretation guidelines are coming,
it may not be quickly enough for some labs but they are coming.
So in response to some of the other comments,
yes we as a community need to get together
and discuss how we are reporting come to a...an agreement
on what our report wording means and move away from some
of the could have associative statements
and really well define our report words
so that it is understood throughout the community.
There was some additional comments regarding
standardization that forensic science is becoming
so compartmentalized that no one is being taught
overall case approach, again this relates to education
of all our colleagues.
Moving and talking among the different units as long
as we know what other things are being collected we can help
other units to understand what we are doing
and get a better overall case approach for that case
and provide the best evidence
and then again the cookbook analogy
that is frustrating many people and again you need to work
on your guidelines and with your QA and allow
for that flexibility for additional unknown sampling.
There's always the need for statistics and databases,
however with statistics, care really needs to be taken. Not all
of the trace evidence can have statistics applied to them
in a manner that is appropriate for court
so we can't have statistics just to have numbers,
the data may not support it.
Databases we can use and there's a list of some
of the databases that were being used in the field now
and so libraries that people are building and as we grow these
in-house through the trace community we should be able
to share these and share ideas of how
to build upon each other's work.
In relation to hair exams, there were some issues,
some believe we don't do it any more, I think it is,
as Sandy did show, there are significant number of labs
that are still doing hair examinations,
microscopic comparisons are not going by the wayside,
there are a significant number of labs that do it,
however we need to continue to promote the fact
that hairs can provide a lot of corroborative information
and investigative information beyond the potential association
with a known sample, can provide information such as
if it was forcibly removed or crushed,
if there's any postmortem root banding, if it's been cut
by glass, some things about the race, and hair color
if it's been treated, untreated, all the things like that.
So if our laboratories can explore the full extent
of hairs prior to being consumed for DNA examinations
that is something we need to push for.
Some options that were suggested, one individual wrote
that agencies are begging for trace analysis and we have
to join up with other states and this individual is
in the western states and suggested having an MOU
with surrounding states to train a part-time person
and to be able to share that person or have sort
of a regional trace unit that could do cases
for all the western states, so if they could have somebody
who could collect the trace and then send it to some
of these regional centers,
that might solve some of the problems.
So that's one thought that's out there, and to work better
with academia and business to come up with testing procedures
and methods that might help...help trace evidence
and to stay relevant
by providing more investigative leads,
not just answering the questions that are in the incoming request
but by participating in education and outreach.
Continuing on educating the public we need to work
on educating the detectives, patrol, investigators,
hospital personnel and MEs' offices who are collecting a lot
of the evidence and making sure they don't throw everything
into one bag, that they can separate things
and they handle it in a way that is good for the preservation
of the evidence in the chain of custody.
And to work with university programs
to strengthen their trace evidence programs
so that we can build more
of these new trace evidence examiners that are starting
to come into the field.
Surprisingly from our survey...questionnaire we did
find that there are a number of ...most
of the labs are doing education and outreach and these are some
of the people that they are reaching out to,
the people who collect the evidence, the attorneys,
the SANE and SART nurses, medical examiners, universities,
they're getting to a lot of people
but they're still many more to get to so
if we can still continue to reach out and there's less
than 10 percent that are not doing any education outreach
and we need to get to those laboratories and make sure
that they do reach out to their contributors.
There are people who are doing research
in the laboratory systems which is encouraging,
however it's just over 50 percent,
a majority of the labs are collaborating with universities
in an internship type programs to get a lot of the links
with students but there is greater potential
of collaboration between universities and laboratories
so that we get the pertinent research.
Some of the things we need with research is
to get the information that is going to be case relevant
but is going to help substantiate our evidence when we bring it
into court, we need it to be current, updated regularly
and accurate and get out some of the information that is in some
of internal research projects and get that out to the public,
to our public, to the community.
One of the issues was additional... was trace evidence needs
to develop a trace evidence society to help resolve issues,
set standards and certification in each of the subdisciplines,
validate training, etcetera.
The problem with this particular issue is I don't necessarily
want to dilute the attendance at a lot of the meetings
that we already have and the American Board
of Criminalistics already does have a certification test
which I know several of you are taking part
of in earlier this week
but we can make certification more rigorous
and use SWGMAT guidelines
that have become standards through ASTM.
What has also been proposed is the American Society
of Trace Evidence Examiners and on your tables there is a paper
on this proposed organization and what their attempt is,
their goal is to disseminate trace evidence issues
through a web site, have an online journal or newsletter,
have a business meeting with the major forensic conferences,
potentially having one with the trace evidence symposium
if we have it every other year and that in association
with another regional or national meeting
on the off years, just be a professional organization
that can promote trace evidence more effectively as a group
than just from individuals and they also hope
to facilitate training.
If you've any questions on ASTE please contact Vinnie Desiderio
or any of the other members who are listed
on the pamphlet and they can answer more throughout the week.
I'm running short on time but basically what is our future
as a discipline? There are labs that are thinking of getting rid
of their trace evidence unit in order to send those positions
to DNA or their crime scene units and to be able
to then maybe just collect and identify materials on scene.
We need to be the ones who are saying that no we need
to have the trace evidence units in the laboratories
who cannot lose more positions, so at this point I'd
like to open this all up to every one for comments and again
if you could just come to the two microphones, state your name
and your affiliation, if you have any comments or ideas
to help the future of trace evidence
or if you have any comments or questions on any
of the information that Sandy
and I have presented this morning, we'd be happy
to take your questions at this time.
[ Pause ]
No one has any questions or comments?
Okay well, hopefully throughout the week we will get more people
involved, we'd like to see a little more participation
and sharing of ideas but at this point I thank you for your time
and attention, I how we've opened your eyes
to what is being discussed in the field and what are some
of the issues that are currently surrounding trace evidence,
thank you.
[ Applause ]