Real CSI Facts
The Seattle Times reports about major backlogs in Washington’s State Patrol Crime Laboratory Division. The article is very short but it gives you some real CSI facts as opposed to the fast-lab scenes you seen on TV:
- On average, it takes state experts more than six months to complete ballistics tests in cases involving firearms. Detectives often wait up to a year for results
- The science of fighting crime is not like TV shows where complex lab work takes only minutes. A diligent ballistics examiner, for example, may process about eight cases per month
- Processing evidence within a month of when it is collected by police is the lab’s acceptable standard. But, of the six different kinds of analysis conducted by the state lab, only two areas meet the one-month deadline.
- Testing for DNA on average takes two months.
- Fingerprint exams take about 47 days.
Read the article here.
Categories: Forensics
Tags: Ballistics, Crime Labs, DNA, Evidence, Finger Printing, Forensics, Gun Fire, Police, Washington