DC's ongoing crime lab debacle

Delays and backlogs are undermining criminal cases

The Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) runs DC’s unaccredited “crime lab” and they just released their annual report for the 2022 fiscal year (October 2021-September 2022). This incredibly lagged report is one of the few windows the public gets into DFS’ operations since the agency publishes almost no ongoing performance metrics. Unfortunately it appears that operations at DFS are deteriorating and the ultimate goal of reaccreditation keeps getting delayed. “How to run a crime lab” doesn’t usually feature in public debates about crime, but in DC the District government’s inability to do so is undermining cases and helping criminals evade justice.

There’s been a lot of great reporting on how DFS lost its accreditation (this piece covers a lot of that history). This post will instead be focusing on the current situation inside DFS and its future plans. The work DFS and its vendors do is important because many cases require physical evidence like fingerprints, DNA or firearms testing that MPD cannot do on its own. Because of DFS’ problematic history and lack of accreditation, it has to rely on accredited vendors to do some of its most important work:

• DFS tasks: Collecting and securing evidence from crime scenes, victims etc.

• Outsourced tasks: Processing, analyzing and uploading evidence to national databases for DNA, fingerprint and firearms test results

In terms of the DFS tasks that are still done in-house, we’ve seen a 33% decline in the volume of evidence items processed by DFS’ Crime Scene Sciences team:

This decrease in the quantity of evidence is both a function of DFS responding to fewer crime scenes (down from 6,194 in FY 2020 to 4,851 in FY 2022) and DFS collecting fewer evidence items per crime scene (from 13.5 in FY 2020 to 11.5 in FY 2022). It’s possible that DFS responding to fewer crime scenes may be function of changes in MPD and/or crime rates. However the decrease in evidence items per crime scene suggests that DFS is being less thorough in collecting evidence. It’s also notable that DFS’ timeliness (reaching crime scenes and completing crime scene reports on time) has been decreasing each year since FY 2020:

Another in-house DFS function is the Forensic Intelligence Unit (FIU) which “ensures that evidence testing requests submitted to the [Forensic Science Laboratory] are evaluated, triaged and prioritized” (note that this includes the testing that is currently outsourced by DFS). FIU’s primary workload indicator is the number of requests they handle from other agencies (MPD, USAO and OAG). Here again we see a declining volume. It’s not clear how much of this decline is driven by DFS failing to process requests or if MPD/USAO/OAG are making fewer requests (and why):

While DFS is struggling to perform its core in-house tasks, its outsourcing efforts have largely failed to replace the lab’s previous capacity. For starters, DFS previously had a Firearms Examination Unit (FEU) that used to make over 5,000 National Integrated Ballistic Information Network (NIBIN) entries annually that generated 208 leads in FY 2020. That function doesn’t exist at DFS anymore (background here) and DC now depends on “case-by-case” support from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) as described in DFS’ oversight responses (in blue):

While it’s true that some high-quality evidence (ATF) is infinitely better than lots of low-quality or forged evidence (what FEU was alleged to be doing); the lack of a reliable source of high-quality evidence puts MPD detectives at a huge disadvantage in trying to solve gun crimes. Note that a case must have an “ATF nexus,” is subject to ATF approval and we have no data on how much support ATF is providing. Unfortunately, gun crimes are up 53% YTD, making the fact that DFS has “no plans” to restore this functionality (while trying to regain accreditation in other areas) all the more concerning:

DFS’ Latent Fingerprint Unit (LFU) “partners with accredited laboratories to provide Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)” support for cases but unfortunately entries are down 84% and “hits” (when an entered fingerprint matches another in the database) are down 67% since FY 2020:

DNA testing under the Forensic Biology Unit (FBU) is another function that DFS has to outsource. They have prioritized processing Physical Evidence Recovery Kits (PERKs) and thankfully have almost no backlog but the timeliness is decreasing each year:

Unfortunately there is an enormous backlog of at least 770 other DNA samples from violent crime scenes. DFS has only established 2 partnerships with “state” laboratories seemingly due to incredibly picky criteria (see below). Instead of seeking how to interface between different analytical platforms or collaboratively contracting with other states (in order to make more states eligible partners), DFS appears to be content with the extremely limited capacity it has today:

As a result, DNA entries to the CODIS system are down 91% and “hits” are down 61%.

DFS’ annual report doesn’t say anything about plans to expand DNA vendor capacity but it does outline how this team (the FBU) “sponsored a tour to South Africa," “participated in a SART panel discussion with Moldova” and “attended several meetings and conferences.”

One possible reason that DFS has failed to secure sufficient vendor capacity is that its leadership consistently thought reaccreditation was just around the corner. From the period in 2021 immediately after DFS lost accreditation until May 2023, DFS was run by Interim Director Anthony Crispino (who is now at DPW). This WTOP piece provides a good breakdown on the ever-shifting timeline for when DFS expects to regain accreditation (and the “Early 2024” estimate is only for some parts of DFS):

If Director Crispino sincerely believed in July 2021 that the lab’s lapse in accreditation was only going to last a few months it makes sense why his team would not prioritize outsourcing capacity. But in hindsight the fact that the lab has 1. Failed to meet any of its reaccreditation deadlines and 2. Build out sufficient interim vendor capacity (even as a backup plan) has enormously hindered investigations and prosecutions in DC. Less charitably, it’s possible that the desire to protect jobs at DFS and protect Mayor Bowser’s administration from (more) negative headlines about the lab also motivated DFS away from securing the vendor capacity it actually needed. If this sounds overly cynical/political; I invite you to read Director Crispino’s statement in the annual report:

• “The Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) made tremendous progress over Fiscal Year (FY) 2022 utilizing the resources provided by Mayor Bowser in her efforts to provide safer streets for D.C. District residents and visitors.”

• “the progress that has occurred was only possible because of the Mayor’s commitment to providing the resources that the department needs, complemented by the support of the Council.”

• “I would like to acknowledge Mayor Bowser, City Administrator Donahue, Deputy Mayor Appiah, and their staff members for their continuous and generous support of the DFS as we strive to achieve the Mayor’s vision of a safer, stronger Washington, D.C. I would also like to recognize all of our public safety partners who support the DFS.”

By word count, those paeans to Mayor Bowser are fully 34% of his entire statement and he refers to Mayor Bowser more often (4 times) than he does to crime (3 times). I think it’s reasonable to at least consider that political factors may have influenced decision making at DFS.

Even if DFS does regain accreditation for some or all of its functions, it’s questionable how credible it will be to DC juries given its past. There’s an argument that DC is “throwing good money after bad” and we’d be better off if we “close the crime lab and establish long term contracts with accredited private vendors.” It’s also important that the lack of vendor capacity for new evidence has meant that DFS hasn’t even started its promised review of old evidence that may have been tainted by DFS’ past mistakes.

DFS, and especially its vendor strategy, deserves significantly more scrutiny. Every key metric is worsening and DFS’ stated plans appear to be insufficient. There are a lot of worthwhile stories and/or reports to be written about why DFS is so far off track and our leaders owe it to Washingtonians to explain how they intend to fix this situation.