MR. ASPLEN: Okay. Folks, to start the afternoon, I'd like to introduce the moderator of this particular panel on educational issues, and it's Chief Darrell Sanders who is the chief of police of Frankfort, Illinois.

Chief Sanders, as many of the other participants, is also a member of the National Commission on the Future of DNA Evidence and is a member of the crime scene working group also that again developed a number of the training tools that we've talked about.

Originally he started his career in Charleston County, South Carolina, but was not terribly long ago was the president of the International Association of the Chiefs of Police, and I would say, again, that the Commission owes Chief Sanders a great debt of gratitude.

Among other things, perhaps if there's a most important function, what the Chief does is always, always in our deliberations grounds us in the importance of the police officer on the street.

It is very easy in big federal bodies and commissions and big grand discussions to lose that perspective, to lose the perspective of what the officer needs on the street when he's doing his job or she's doing her job every single day, and Chief Sanders has always been really fantastic at bringing us back to that important, central issue. Chief Sanders.

(Applause.)

CHIEF SANDERS: You can tell he's an attorney of the prosecutor. He sat there with a straight face. What he would like to say is most of the times at these meetings I'm the jerk that causes all of the trouble. So he wanted to be --

As a matter of fact a proof in point, with all due respect to Chris, they keep talking about Florida, Virginia and New York fast coming up. I'm trying to figure out what happened to Illinois. Director Nolan is here, superintendent Hilliard is here, the former Commander of Konen from Chicago PD, I guarantee you show, or Illinois is right up there with them.

So New York, all due respect, you're not going to pass them until you get past us. So I just had to, I just had to clear the record there a little bit, if could.

If we could though, if I could be serious, and sometimes that's very difficult for me to do, but one of things, this is very exciting, this DNA stuff. It's very, very exciting.

When you think about it, I've been on this Commission, and honestly we've had some knockdown, drag-out discussions about some of these issues especially with me sitting next to Barry Scheck. Barry and I have, we disagree on a lot of things, and I mean that respectfully, he's really a great guy. He agrees wholeheartedly in DNA evidence, but it's just that his and my perception of issues -- for instance, the DNA testing of all arrestees. Barry and I will never agree on that. I mean, it's that kind of thing. So we have these issues, but things that come up all the time I consider as slams against law enforcement to where they're suggesting that we destroy evidence intentionally so that they can't be used for post-conviction relief and those kinds of things. I take great offense to that.

The other thing is that they make it sound like that, and one of the interesting things about this Commission is I have a 27-man police department in we call it South Suburban, Chicago. It's actually a semi-rural area.

I sat at the same table with Superintendent Terry Hillard of the Chicago Police Department who has got a little over 12,000. For us to be able to have these discussions about what our needs are, something that benefits me, is impossible for him to enact, so to speak, and those kinds of things.

So when I say it's exciting, I really mean that this is exciting, but at the same time, it's scary. It's scary in that I believe that -- look at the O.J. Simpson case and the fact that LAPD and how badthey made LAPD look as a result of the handling of that evidence.

This stuff is real dynamite as to its potential, but it also has the potential for being very catastrophic to us if we do not prepare ourselves, and I say ourselves, because most of the time when you hear about all of this stuff I think, Oh, that's Terry Hillard's problem, that's not mine.

This is everybody's problem because it's going to apply to all of us, and what's more concerning to me is that it's first-responders responsibility. It's not the technicians.

I mean, you got your evidence techs, you got this. If you have a big case and you're a small agency, you call upon somebody like the Illinois State Police to help you out. They'll send their highly qualified individuals.

First responders have a responsibility here that you're not going to be able to get around, and the thing that concerns me when I say it concerns me is I want you to think about the fact that we don't respond properly.

What's going to happen when it's in the newspaper? I mean, they won't allow me -- Chris has told me I'm not allowed to talk about any of the other issues that we talk about in the Commission because we'll never get to the presenters; but in this light, I would hope that you pay very close attention to these two presentations and at the end that we do have an opportunity to have an open debate or discussion about some of the things that are going to be pertinent to us educating police officers.

My argument has been, will continue to be, that our police officers do their jobs and they do them very well. They have to be given the opportunity. They have to know about the technology and be given the tools that they need to be able to do that. That's my belief, so that -- that's my perspective. That doesn't mean it's correct.

That doesn't mean it's correct. I just means that's one man's perspective, and what I'm hoping is before this session is over that we will be able to talk about that and come to a conclusion about some of the things that we need to do to educate all police officers as to the potential of DNA, their responsibility from first responder.

So with that, if I could take just a second out and actually, the first gentleman I'm going to introduce, if I was to introduce him properly, we'd be here for about 45 minutes to be able to try to properly introduce him.

As I said to him, he really doesn't need any introduction to the members of law enforcement. It's Dr. Lee Colwell.

Lee is the director of the criminal justice institute the National Center for Rural Law Enforcement. He's got a distinguished 40-year career with the FBI, and I won't say anything more than that because I think he can speak for himself. Dr. Lee Colwell. Lee.

(Applause.)

DR. COLWELL (Dr. Colwell's PowerPoint Presentation): Good afternoon. Listen, it's not going to get any better than that.

I'm glad to see that Chris finally accommodated these senior members of law enforcement like myself because my capacity to endure long presentations was reached three or four times this morning, but then the problem is when he does give us a break, we stand outside and Darrell and I were talking about well, how can we get everyone back inside. He said, Well, he might announce that they were about to have a drawing for a cash door prize.

It's really an honor for me to have been asked to participate in this very significant and very important summit for DNA for law enforcement, and I'm especially grateful to Attorney General Janet Reno for sponsoring this program and for approving the funding that permits us all to come together, and also, I can't make any remarks without acknowledging the critical role of Chief Justice Shirley Abramson who chaired the Commission, Julie Samuels of NIJ, the Acting Director, who continues to support the initiative of the DNA program and a special comment about Chris Asplen.

Chris is one of the most unique individuals I have ever met, and he came to the table for this DNA Commission with exceptional qualifications and a burning interest and desire to do something for law enforcement.

I must say that his stewardship of this as Executive Director in the past almost three years now has just been above approach, and I would like -- I don't know if he's in the room here so I'm not saying it because he's present, but whether he's in the room or not, I would like for us to just acknowledge that with an expression of our appreciation.

(Applause.)

DR. COLWELL: Finally, in acknowledgments, I want to express my appreciation for NIJ and Chris inviting people, and also to Chief, for getting non-urban law enforcement involved, and the Chief has been exceptional in bringing the focus of the Commission back to the realities, the fact that 89 or almost 90 percent of the law enforcement agencies in this great country of ours are in non-urban areas.

In addition, he used the word teach, and Commissioner, Maureen Casey used this word. Nowhere did they use the word training, and that's a change, a major change in our philosophy in law enforcement I think where when we approach the issue of the technology and how to use it of DNA and the forensics and how important that is, we're using a new term that as opposed to training in the past, we talk about teaching law enforcement, the importance of it.

I was pleased also, Ms. Forman, Dr. Forman this morning taught us about DNA a real quick educational course, and someone else this morning made the comment about how much smarter law enforcement people are today than they were sometime back in the past.

Now, I'm gratified to stand here with my gray hair and see that there's a lot of gray hair here in this audience, and in my career of the FBI, I was there 29 years, 11 months and three days, but it was kind of -- when I became and my career elevated to a policy level, people would come in and talk about how much smarter the FBI agents were than they were ten years ago, and after I while I got to where Darrell was beginning to be offended by that because when I went in the FBI in the late 50's, they talked about the new crop of FBI agents being smarter than the ones that were there at that time.

Then I saw the same thing happening in the 60's, in the 70's and the 80's and I guess it's going on in the 90's.

It's true that technology and information is so much more available today, that people have to appear smarter, but I don't accept the fact that they're smarter than the rest of us.

I was in Australia recently and I found out a new way to go to sleep at night, and they told me -- I said, What do you do? I have trouble sleeping. My doctor tells me, Well, that's a factor of age. They said, Well, you're doing it wrong. I said, You know, count sheep at night. They said Well, you're doing it wrong. This was a sheep, what we would call a rancher. They call them farmers over there. He said, You've got to count the legs and divide it by four and then you'll go to sleep.

I think just as the ICP in 1932 or about 1932 recognized the need for a comprehensive national management system for the fingerprinting system that we're approaching that when it comes to DNA and the need to get information out, the need to be a resource for every law enforcement entity in this country.

How that would, how the organizational structure might be a symbol. I don't know. Something was mentioned this morning about 13 regions or districts, but I think there is more and more clearly evolving a need for those regions or whatever it might be.

I could not help but be reminded in hearing the outstanding presentations the last four or five hours of an experience I had in the 70's in the FBI looking back at its history where Presidents of the United States would order the FBI to increase its staff by a thousand FBI agents.

Do you remember that in 1969? Then again in 1970. Then again in 1972. Then again in 1978 or '79, and then again in 1980 and '81, and then when I think about what we were doing in hiring more and more police officers around the country and I don't know what the number is, it varies from 40,000 to a hundred thousand, what are we doing to this system without paying attention to the needs of the crime labs and the needs of the prosecutors in our country.

For years, the Department of Justice would increase its investigators without any thought as to what impact that would have on the U.S. Bureau of Prisons or the prosecuting, the ability of the prosecutors to handle the cases that would be generated by that and the ability of the courts to handle those cases.

I assume that we still believe that if we hire more police officers and we hire more FBI agents orfederal law enforcement agents that we believe that they will increase the investigations and the solutions and that if that is true, then it's going to impact on other entities of the criminal justice system.

So I think one of our arguments in advocating more funding for the crime lab is just that. Law enforcement is certainly more effective and efficient today than it was ten years or 20 years ago. It manages its cases much better, and it's more successful. I think the solution rights are going up.

Just look at the evidence that's been presented in the last few hours about how the clearance rates can be affected by competent staffed, well-funded crime laboratories.

I am here to talk about education. For the past ten years, the Criminal Justice Institute has been involved in management education for non-urban law enforcement. It's been involved in research for non-urban law enforcement, and it's been involved in the delivery of forensic educational programs for law enforcement.

It's the only entity of its kind in the United States that I'm aware of that houses under one umbrella forensics, management education and research that is university based and practitioner oriented.

We have another unusual characteristic or mandate in our legislation in the State of Arkansas, and that is that the legislature in the enabling legislation for the National Center for Rural Law Enforcement and the Criminal Justice Institute order us to go forth outside the boundaries of the State of Arkansas and do whatever we could with some state funding to improve the educational programs and the forensic knowledge and the research capabilities, where needed, outside the State of Arkansas.

Now, we have a great deal of, not a great deal, but some federal funding that supports that national effort.

The Criminal Justice Institute itself has three components, and it focuses on management, law enforcement, forensics and research and the National Center.

The Law Enforcement Management Center, we focus on those who supervise others in law enforcement. Not, not the -- we're not a basic training academy. It's those who use, who supervise others through tax knowledge. In other words, municipal law enforcement agencies and sheriff's offices.

We put through our programs over 2,000 officers. This last year it was 4,600. We deliver programs throughout the state. We use other universities and colleges.

If they are aligned with a law enforcement agency, a chief or a sheriff must be a cosponsor of any education programs we put on through our satellites and other institutions of higher learning.

We present no programs that are based on development of theory or concepts unless it isreviewed by advisory board law enforcement practitioners. We want to make sure that all of our programs that are delivered are relevant to what is needed by the actual practitioner.

I mentioned the Center for Research and Assistance. That we do -- we've performed the first statewide analysis of crime in the state. We find that the court dockets are 26 months behind.

Now, judges don't like to hear that. Prosecutors love to hear it sometimes because it calls attention to their inability to get cases before the court.

We do position descriptions for -- everything that we do is at no cost to law enforcement. Remember, we focus on the non-urban areas, and those agencies have a static tax base and their training budgets or educational budgets may be as low as $400 per department and sometimes on average around $1,200 per department, and we're talking about 89 percent of the law enforcement agencies in the country. In the State of Arkansas, it's about 97 percent of the law enforcement agencies.

We also write, free of charge, policy manuals for these small agencies, and it's on the web page. We can give any law enforcement agency in the country RRCs, we provide policy manuals, if they ask for it, either hard copy, CD Rom or they can download it from their computer.

Those policy manuals from jail supervision to supervision, to all kinds of, any policy that's a matter of concern for a law enforcement agency are created through a battery of attorneys and prosecutors and law enforcement officials, and we don't advocate that that manual should be used as is. It should be reviewed by the chief or the sheriff and the prosecutor and those that are responsible for that liability in their particular area.

We also do testing for selection for new candidates in the law enforcement agency. We send people on site. We provide the tests. We provide the results of the tests to that agency or whoever the hiring authority is. We do not participate in the selection itself. We also do research on the courses and effects of certain actions in a law enforcement agency.

The Forensic Science Education Center is responsible for hands-on focus crime scene death investigation programs. We have several programs, and we keep the number in the class no more than 25 and preferably around 15 or 20 so that we can have direct contact between the students and the instructors, and one of our premier instructors, Darrell you would be pleased to know, is from the State of Illinois.

CHIEF SANDERS: I am pleased to know that.

DR. COLWELL: His name is Hayden Baldwin. He's retired from the Illinois State Police. This is in the area that the Chief talked about in his introduction, and that is the first responders.

In the non-urban areas, you may not have a homicide but once a year or a few burglaries during the year, but what happens, they have responders and they show up and they do what we lovingly refer to or affectionately refer to at the National Center and the Institute, there's a circle ofwagons.

If I can demonstrate just a little bit, they arrive at the crime scene and as another one arrives, they kind of go around and look at the crime scene and decide what has happened, and I do not say that in a derogatory sense at all, but that is what has happened. It does happen frequently.

The history, and I've talked a little bit about the history of the Institute and the Center and I won't go into that. The needs are pretty apparent. I think most of you, 90 percent of the law enforcement agencies, ten percent of police serve the population of more than 25,000. Of that 90 percent -- if you take the whole universe of it, only ten percent of law enforcement in the United States serves a population of more than 25,000.

Of those areas that have a population of more than a hundred thousand, only two percent of the law enforcement agencies serve those populations, and it's true that we could have a more efficient law enforcement community in the United States if all of these law enforcement agencies were consolidated, but that's not what this country is about.

It's about diversity and delegation. It's not about centralization of an authority, especially in the police area.

Our country's founding father and the political philosophy in this country is not about the consolidation authority, such as law enforcement, but it's about making sure that's fragmented in a way.

So our problem in law enforcement is coordination, communication and cooperation, and I think when all this is said and done about this conference and what the needs are, law enforcement has to take the lead role in talking and working with the crime labs and with the prosecutors' offices in any coordinated effort that will affect the legislators in the days, in the months to come about additional funding.

Some of our activities -- since 1990, we have conducted a number of national forums and surveys and just to give you a quick profile about who the non-urban law enforcement is and what their needs are, we refer to them as small town and rural law enforcement agencies, and that consists of the majority of sheriffs and the majority of chiefs of police.

They have limited financing. They have limited staffing. They tend to be generalists. They are limited in their access to needed education and training programs, but their functions, as in the major cities, fall into four categories as defined by our surveys in our research. It's administrative operations, legal issues, investigative operations and forensic crime scene investigations. Not any surprises there to anyone.

Some of the things that I want to emphasize about our national crime picture is that while we all have been thrilled with the reduction of crime nationally, if you take that same uniform crime report and pull out 90 percent of the law enforcement agencies, these non-urban, rural agencies, you will see that crime has not gone down in the rural or non-urban areas. To the contrary,violent crime, some categories of violent crime have increased.

In my own state, Arkansas, in the last ten years when you take out the 13 cities that have a population of more than 25,000 in the state, and we have 495 municipal governments and 75 counties, when you take out those 13 cities with a population of more than 25,000, our crime in the State of Arkansas has gone up 82 percent in the last ten years. Nationally in the non-urban areas, the crime has, the crime rate has gone up 53 percent.

Now, while this represents only one-third of our nation's population, it is in those areas that doesn't have constant TV coverage, has a low tax base, doesn't have a full-time daily newspaper and it just escapes unless you got a very vocal Chief, like the Chief here, those problems and issues can go -- maybe I should leave that. I want to change that. I'm sorry, Chief. A very articulate Chief. So it's a major problem.

The importance of DNA, you've heard all about that this morning, and I'm not an expert on DNA, although I've been privileged to serve on their work group, but it does represent the most critical form of evidence in my view.

You know, in law enforcement, we -- in investigations, you get information, you collect information from witnesses and signed statements and observation and the crime scene, but it's been underscored by major cases in the United States in the last eight years the most critical forum, the most reliable forum of information is physical evidence if, and only if, it's properly identified, properly collected, properly preserved and properly analyzed, properly stored and available for retrieval as you, as you've heard earlier.

Education and training and equipment and technology are the three big issues.

We operate several, as I mentioned earlier, forensic courses. By the way, if you don't know, I would like to interrupt my comments and acknowledge the presence of Dr. Cheryl Pescovich-May who is the director -- stand up, Cheryl. Come on Cheryl. Believe me -- thank you.

(Applause.)

DR. COLWELL: Believe me, she's not reticent in her home environment. We're very proud of Dr. May, and we recruited her from our medical school at the University of Arkansas School of Medicine.

Anyway, she operates several programs, and she's determined that it cost $125 to $250 per day for hands-on programs based on our experience, and we pay for the travel and the lodging and the meals.

Now, Arkansas don't -- with exception of an Embassy Suites and a couple other hotels, we don't have these $150 and $250-a-night lodging, but we're getting there.

Confronted with a training or educational budget, police call them training budgets, of about a thousand dollars or less per department, that doesn't go very far.

We have put on a three-day class, and just that one class would deplete one department's education and training budget.

We tailor our curriculum based on these surveys and Oakside body of chiefs of police to meet the needs of the particular law enforcement community that they're presenting to. We have a distance-learning program. We use your satellite centers. We focus on competencies and assessment in developing the courses. We emphasize the selective submission of physical evidence to the crime lab who we work very closely with in the state.

We buy equipment and try to make that available where we can, and we attempt to expose the first responders in a broad knowledge base paradigm of the advantages of DNA as an example and what more what not to do until a larger agency, such as our State Police or a larger municipal law enforcement agency or sheriff's office is able to come in and help.

So ours is more an orientation, an educational process of what not to do, and obviously, an identification of those things that they need to do to protect the crime scene.

The Commission Work Group published, I believe it was a trifold on what you needed to know as a law enforcement agency.

Increase the -- what is needed to increase the knowledge and skills, access to needed equipment and that, of course, increases the ability to solve crimes through science and prevent crimes indirectly.

Property crimes increase in our area and all over the country as time goes by, but I think the 1998 data showed a slight decrease of a greater increase was in the urban areas.

Clearance rates for crimes in rural, non-urban areas is about 19 percent, pretty close to that in the urban areas.

When I was in my former life in the FBI, the national clearance rate, which we don't talk about much in law enforcement, all crimes considered was only 14.7 percent. Some of them, as I say, goes -- we don't want to go there when we talk about solution rates.

But technology, as was evidenced by the presentations earlier today, especially in the areas of violent crime involving rape and when they're linked with burglaries and residential burglaries can lead to significant and important solutions.

The impact in the rural communities of DNA can be tremendous. There already exists between law enforcement and their communities, whether it's a sheriff or a Chief, strong social ties.

The law enforcement officers are more likely to be in church or in a social gathering with thevictims than any other law enforcement agency, those in the non-urban areas, because it's just a smaller area and they're more in contact with the community. It's not a slap at the urban areas at all. It's just a factor of small population areas and the high visibility of law enforcement in those areas.

I think the education of the smaller law enforcement agencies in this country is of paramount importance, and any election year of the national offices, such as we're going through this year, we hear calls for law and order, we hear calls for improvement in our criminal justice system, we hear calls for the need of the protection of our citizens, and DNA I think, as unlike any other innovation or technology development in the last 20 or 30 years, stands out as a shining bright light for law enforcement if it's properly developed in our laboratory facilities or increased, enlarged and incompetencies increased can be a deacon, so to speak, for citizens knowing that law environment can not only do the job, but will do the job.

The funding issue is very direct I believe, and I think as one of the presenters this morning mentioned that, I guess it was Chris mentioned in dealing with members of the legislatures they do, I believe, pay attention to what law enforcement identifies as its higher priority.

I know in my state and in the 17 other states that I've lived in the legislatures worked in that way. The Law Enforcement Association, such as the Chiefs of police Association with each state, the Municipal Police Associations, the Sheriffs Associations are the ones that really prepare that list of priorities for the legislature, the members of the legislature, and I think law enforcement has historically underestimated its influence when it comes to the political process.

It's really not politics to express the needs for conducting criminal investigations and analyzing it. That's not political in talking to a member of the legislature or your mayor or your county judge.

It's articulating the needs in a way that can be funneled in to the policy makers so that they can make meaningful decisions about the funding priorities that they're faced with.

I do not, did not when I was in the FBI, and do not today, consider it lobbying to talk about the needs of law enforcement because they are very real. They are very human needs.

There's not a Chief that I've ever met who did not know his elected representative, his or her elected representative who was not in contact with them, a sheriff is the same way, and who did not come into contact with that elected official as a matter of routine.

You show me an elected official, whether it's a member of, a Senator figure or a representative at a state level or a member of the United States congress, a Senator, or a representative or a mayor who refuses to see and talk with their Chief or their sheriff and I'll show you someone that's not going to be in office very long.

So you have an open door, and I know it's easy for me to stand here looking for a university and saying, Well, it's okay to go ahead and talk to everybody. I think law enforcement should andmust take the lead in advocating the needs for additional funding.

I think the best way to characterize that is to say that it is an educational need because there's so much information, bad publicity about what DNA is and what it does. It's up to law enforcement to overcome that with their prosecutor, through their prosecutor that they use with the elected officials, and you can do that by, with that educational process, and I think there are plenty of people in our country that will come and speak and make presentations to the associations and to those meetings.

We in Arkansas have gone to the Chief Association in the last four or five years, six years, bring in people from out of state who are recognized national experts in the field to help brief the members of the legislature in particular areas.

So I would encourage cooperation, coordination and communication between the crime labs and the prosecutors, and I would advocate that the law enforcement take a leading role in that.

Finally, we have found in our relationship and our attempt to assess small town and rural, non-urban law enforcement agencies that they don't have a lot of time.

We do not put on any course that is more than three days and usually two days, two and a half days in length because they cannot be away from their county or municipal area for longer than that.

Plus, some of the agencies, if you take one person from an eight-person department, you take a good percentage of the, of the people. They have a high turnover because many of them, officers are going on to a larger department, but the need is great, and we believe the best way to handle, to make effective what this Commission has learned in its almost three years of deliberation is through educational programs like we have or similar to what we administered at the National Center and at the Institute in the State of Arkansas that are, that make no attempt to try to develop an understanding of what DNA is, as Lisa so effectively did to all of us this morning. I'm now an expert on DNA, aren't you? But it makes no attempt to do that. It talks about what not to do and those significant and important things that must be done.

I think if we do that, you'll see the clearance rate of those very significance violent crimes, rape and so forth, in the rural areas rise.

They don't have as many cases as we do in the larger areas, but their interest and their commitment and their dedication to doing a good job professionally is unequal anyway.

We had one of our sheriffs who came in after one of our management courses and he said, he really expressed his appreciation for the content of the courses, especially on the fact that it was free, and he said, You know, we're tired of being just good old boys. We want to be something better than that.

I think if this Commission results in anything significant, which it's already done, it willhighlight the needs of the crime labs throughout the country and the needs of all law enforcement to take advantage of this technology that is still evolving and is so important to the solution of crime, and the way to do that is through educational courses, not training. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

CHIEF SANDERS: I was not kidding you about not getting a break. As soon as this session is over, you will get a break. I don't think they're listening to me out there.

You guys think about this. Do you know what I was thinking about when I was sitting there listening --

THE AUDIENCE: We don't want to know.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yeah, you don't want to know what I was thinking about. Shut up.

(Laughter.)

CHIEF SANDERS: Unfortunately, he knows me. He's a profiler, too. That's what's bad.

No. Actually, I was thinking about it as this technology, I'm thinking about when I'm a young policeman and how everybody used to give me so much crap because on TV they could always, you know, they solve crimes from a cigarette butt, and now before my career is over here we are, we can solve crimes from a cigarette butt. That's what I was really thinking about.

Now, wasn't that profound? I will tell you the other profound thing. If things don't change, they're going to stay the way they are.

(Laughter.)

CHIEF SANDERS: I'll tell you, and I'm trying to figure this out. Why do we drive in a parkway and we park in a driveway?

THE AUDIENCE: Take the mic away.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yeah, take the mic away. Actually, I am just trying to kill time while he is trying to turn this one off and that one on.

I guess while he's doing that, I could actually do the introduction and then I could sit down here and I'll have to listen. Oh, my gosh, somebody put fingerprints on this thing.

If I could, the next presenter is Keith Coonrod. Keith is the director of toxicology and drug chemistry services for the New York State Police laboratory system and has been in the forensics business for 23 years.

Mr. Coonrod has served on the board of directors for American Society of Criminal Laboratories Directors, ASCLD, and is currently President Elect of ASCLD.

Keith received his Bachelor's degree in criminology and forensic chemistry from Indiana State University and a Master's in public administration from Merst College. Mr. Keith Coonrod.

(Applause.)

MR. COONROD (Mr. Coonrod's PowerPoint Presentation): First of all while we're setting up the computer, when I was asked to do this presentation, I was wondering, Well, how am I going to address this Summit dealing with law enforcement on the topic of educating. Where do I start? Where do I begin? How do I take and do this presentation? Really, that's already been done here today.

The beginning of the education segment by the fact that we've all been brought together today, we're talking about education, we're talking about DNA, we're talking about training, awareness of DNA, that has actually started here by the fact that we've gotten together. That's the first most important step.

Now, what we do from here on is up to us, and that's the second most important step. So if we carry this message back to our agencies and we spread the word regarding DNA technology, what it can do for you. What do we have to do? We have to become more aware of DNA technology regarding crime scenes' first responders.

A lot these things that we have heard today, that's the most important, is the message that we take back to our agencies.

So my part has already been done, and that is starting or beginning this particular segment regarding education and so, therefore, that's the key is what do we do from here.

First of all, I want to take and, wearing two hats, that as the President Elect of ASCLD, which is the crime laboratories directors. Really we have membership throughout the whole world, and also that as being administrator of the New York State Police, another New York thing coming here, but I'll get to Illinois later.

I want to talk about what's the past role of forensic laboratories in support to law enforcement. In the past really what's happened is the laboratories have supported law enforcement whereby you submit evidence to us, we perform an analysis of that evidence, and basically, we're there to support you in the arrest and conviction of a particular suspect that you have worked hard through your investigation; however, the role of the laboratories has changed, and its current role right now is, Yes, we're there to support law enforcement by analyzing that evidence which supports an arrest of a particular suspect, but also, the one I want to talk about more today is the investigative tool.

There's three major tools that laboratories have they didn't have ten years ago, and they are databases. They involve AFIS, the Automated Fingerprint Identification System. They involvethe drug fire, IBIS Systems. They also now involve the DNA database, and that's the one that I want to talk about is that investigative tool.

In thinking about how to put this program together, here again, the way that I elected to do that was, in part, taking this group and hopefully providing some information to you that provides some education to this group so that you can understand the importance of DNA and DNA technology and, here again, take that back to your agencies. So that's the way that I'm going to approaching this. Let's talk about the investigative tool, first of all.

First of all when we're doing DNA technology, it provides or develops leads for the investigators. Also, we talked about the technology today, STRs, things like that, we're going to get into. It provides results faster to law enforcement agency. It also provides more evidence.

We heard Terrence Gainer talk about toothpicks as far as evidence. All of this technology is just changing so fast.

Some of the slides that I saw earlier today, Dwight, I've got to update one of my slides later on as far as the number of laboratories. I had 93 I think. He's got 114. New York State has 63 hits in the state versus the one.

Here again, the people that are in the know that deal with DNA like us, the technology is changing so fast for us it's very hard to stay communicating with one another and keep current.

So you can imagine what about you yourselves as the law enforcement community. How do you keep up to date? How do you keep ahead as far as what's the technology that's out there, how to handle the evidence, how to deal with the evidence? This is some of the issues that I want to talk about.

How can you take advantage of the DNA technology and law enforcement? First of all, get educated. We talked about education, we talked about training. We can also use the term awareness.

The keyword, if there is nothing else that this group walks away from, I hope that this is at least the one keyword, and that's communication. If we do not communicate and talk, then we will not become educated and trained and become aware regarding DNA technology.

Listening to past speakers this morning, one of the things that I have heard is laboratories, prosecutors, law enforcement agencies. All of us are part of the law enforcement community, the criminal justice community. We must communicate in order to effectively work and apply this tool. That is what's key.

How can we communicate? First of all, how do you become educated? How do you become aware regarding DNA? As I said, being here today is the first step. Visit your laboratory. How many people here have been in to a forensic laboratory? A fair amount. But then there's still a fair amount that have not.

What you need to do is -- as President Elect of ASCLD, one of my major responsibilities this year is I have to put together, in part, an agenda for a symposium. Every year we have a symposium. This year it's our 28th. It's going to be Buffalo. Everybody says because I'm from New York, I had something to do with that. It's just the luck of the draw the way it worked out.

But one of the things is this year at our symposium that we're doing is I'm concentrating on a couple major themes. One of them deals with education and training of our forensic scientists.

You heard Paul Ferrara talk about the Cornwell Institute down in Virginia. One of the major problems that we have within the forensic community is training and educating our people.

Take the firearms examiner. It takes us about two years to train a firearms examiner. Basically, it's a mentoring relationship one to one.

When two years comes up and all of the sudden the person gets a better offer to go to Illinois because they pay higher than we do, there you go, two years has gone out the window and you have to start over again.

We all have limited resources whether we're talking about crime laboratories, whether we're talking about law enforcement. What we have to do is, yes, while we're trying to seek funding and support, we also have to work smarter, more efficiently and more effectively.

One of the things that we're doing is actually Paul Ferrara is going to be working on one of my panels at the symposium coming up in September and that panel is going to be looking at alternatives for training a forensic scientist.

For instance, what about the program at the University of Illinois in Chicago that Bob Hanson is working with. That's very closely with Illinois State Police. What about the Cornwell Institute in Virginia? What about distance learning with Jane Holmer and that the FBI is working on?

We're going to be looking at all of these programs, all of these alternatives. How can we educate our people, our staff, our limited resources in the future? We simply cannot do it the way we've been to do it.

I'm not advocating getting rid of mentoring. There still is a place for that, there always will be, but maybe two years of mentoring is not the way to do it. Maybe one year of working through a university or some programs involving some education, some training and then going on with a year of mentoring might be a better way to take and approach that.

So as President Elect of ASCLD, this is some of the things that we're working on dealing with crime lab directors in our limited resources of forensic scientists, but the big thing is, is start right out by communicating with your laboratory, talk with them. Ask them, Gee, can I come in and visit? Can I talk with somebody in your laboratory? Can I see what it is you're actually doing there?

Yes, our resources are limited, but I would be surprised if any laboratory would just shut you right off and say, We don't even want to talk to you.

The quality of our evidence coming into the laboratory is directly linked to the quality of evidence that you collect and you submit to the laboratory.

In New York State, we have a commission on forensic science. New York State is the only state that mandates you must be accredited if you are a crime laboratory operating, a public laboratory operating in the State of New York. Mandatory. You have to be accredited, all of the crime labs.

Barry Scheck sits on the Commission, and everybody goes, Oh, my gosh. You poor guy. I feel sorry for you, but on the other hand, he's always said, My major component or my major beef is going to be the crime scene. It's not going to be the DNA technology, the STRs.

This is one of the areas that law enforcement really needs to spend some time on is the quality of the evidence, the collection of evidence, the preservation of evidence, recognizing what is DNA evidence.

Here today we've already heard about toothpicks and all of this type of evidence. Five, ten years ago that was not even an option. You'd overlook toothpicks has Terrence Gainer had said.

So start out -- communication is key. Start out by going and visiting your laboratory, asking for assistance in putting together a training program even whether it be at the laboratory or whether it be remotely at your particular site.

In New York State, one of the things that's happening is the New York State Police has put together two programs. One is something I've heard a lot about here today, first responder.

Almost everybody has talked about first responder. Yes, we understand it's very important. It's the first person at the scene. But really what are the components of a first responder? What should you do? How should they react? How should they preserve the scene?

It's going to be up to this group here. I'm not going to stand here with any magical answer saying, This is it what you have to do to educate law enforcement. The initiative is going to be you.

Going back saying, Look, I've heard so much about this DNA it really kind of scares the bajeebers out of me because there's so much that I don't know that we really have to start doing some training, get educated regarding DNA, and we're going to have to take and start some programs ourselves to deal with that.

New York State Police did do that in putting together a responder course to actually train law enforcement officers throughout the State of New York on how to actually be a first responder, the dos and don'ts regarding evidence collection.

What about going to a scene? We all know when you have a crime scene, we kind of talkedabout -- we heard Lee talking about circling the wagons.

Well, I know first experience in a lot of scenes I have been to, sometimes we ourselves, the top brass that are there, are the first ones to go inside that circle and starting pawing around, looking around to see what's going on, but yet we're probably the last ones that really should be in there. So how do we approach crime scenes we may have to look at that may have to change?

Why is this important, all of this stuff that we're talking about? I want to look at some of the issues regarding DNA technology.

First of all, the new don of DNA technology, the DNA database. We've heard discussions regarding the database. I'm not going to linger on it.

We've heard about CODIS, which is a combined DNA identification system, which really is a DNA database.

Also, we've heard about change in technologies. You've heard about RFLP, and then now we've gone on to STR technology.

So what you're getting is this is a changing science that's going on. We've also talked about mitochondrial DNA. All of these have direct impact on law enforcement on how to recognize, handle, preserve, collect evidence and get it to the laboratory for potential analysis.

STR, which is the one that's currently being used, is called short-tandem repeats and it's basically known as third-generation DNA testing. Approximately 63 percent of the DNA labs nationally are doing this, but it provides to you faster tests and actually more evidence, more probative evidence for you to work with.

The law enforcement community needs to know how do I use the DNA database. It's a very, very important tool. So you have to be aware of how to take and use this and use it to your advantage.

Now, one of the main purposes of CODIS or any database is to develop investigative leads. It's there to provide information to you to say, Hey, look, here's a couple of suspects or a particular suspect really at this point that maybe you want to take a look at that was involved in another crime over here that we have reason to believe based on the database hit that may be involved in your particular crime over here.

This is the one I got an update since I was here today. We went from 94 to 114 laboratories. I want to thank you for that one, but, here again, it changes.

We have two indices we've head about and talked about today, forensic and convicted offenders. That will help us as law enforcement agencies, and we talk about the convicted offender index where you get patterns from your offenders, you get case to offender hits. We've talked about patterns from evidence where it's case-to-case hits, the forensic index.

All of this is really important. Building this big index, the more numbers that we get in, and we have heard about all of these laboratories have all of these cases waiting to get into the DNA database that are not there.

New York State has 9,500 cases right now in to our database. We have 53,000 cases waiting to go in. We have 63 hits in New York State right now.

Can you imagine how many more hits we'll get once we get those 53,000 cases that are in there?

All of this is important to get this database built up. The bigger the database, the more information we're going to be able to provide to you in law enforcement, but there's some real key points here.

First of all, law enforcement needs to be aware, they need to be educated, they need some training regarding DNA evidence awareness. Also, appropriate evidence handling.

The American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors Laboratory Accrediting Board, which accredits crime laboratories throughout the world, right now a little over 200 laboratories are accredited.

They are this September introducing a new component for accreditation and that is crime scenes. Any laboratory or any agency that has a crime scene component, in addition with another component, let's say fingerprints, the latent fingerprint section or drug chemistry or trace work doing arsons, etcetera, but any facility that has a crime scene component with another component can apply to have that section accredited.

So that means that there's a certain level of standards that they have to achieve, and this is happening September we're going to have a whole segment at our symposium in Buffalo just dedicated to accrediting the crime scene discipline, how to go about doing that.

How do you take and train or educate? How do you do competency testing? How do you do proficiency testing? There's a lot of real tough issues here.

One of the things that we're doing in New York State because it's mandatory accreditation, we have no choice in New York State. Either you're accredited or out the window you are. You don't do forensics.

One of the thing we're doing, and I'm actually going to be bringing it to the symposium, is we have a crime scene trailer, a 35 foot mobile trailer that right now as we speak it's traveling all throughout New York State.

One of the problems we've heard about here is how do you educate urban and suburban law enforcement communities? This trailer is going out to them.

So instead of saying, Okay. You come to the laboratory where maybe you only have one or twolaboratories in your state and it's located the in the capital or one area and you happen to be 350, 400 miles away and it's not practical if you have 12 or 15 people in your agency to take and send them to the laboratory. What we're doing is we're actually bringing the training out to the area.

The crime scene trailer, it's interesting what it is. It has a mock crime scene set up in it. It has a series of video cameras with live audio/video feed, and during our presentation, we're talking about crime scenes, we're actually going to be having the crime scene unit processed, and the video cameras will be there and it will be live video feed into the crime lab directors while the presentation is going on.

So what we can do is we can actually set up classrooms whereby people can see, law enforcement officers can, detectives and investigators, how to and, just as importantly, how not to process a crime scene, and that's one of the ways that we're actually dealing with how to overcome this education or training aspect in the State of New York dealing with crime scenes.

The other thing is, is how to apply the maximum-case application. Let's just talk about some of the nuts and bolts as far as DNA testing. What is DNA evidence?

We'll go back to Lisa's DNA 101. Where do we find it, and how do I take care of it? These are the three critical components that we really need to be aware of if we're going to be using DNA technology.

First of all, what is DNA evidence? Very simple. Anything biological. It can be blood, semen, sperm, hair, tissue, bones, organs, tooth pulp. We're heard about, talk about mitochondrial all of the way through to -- of course, labs really hate getting in feces and stuff like that, but unfortunately that's part of our job and the way it goes.

Also, we heard about toothpicks. Pap smears we've used, things like that. Anything that's biological is potential evidence.

Don't overrule it. If there's a question, contact the laboratory and ask them, Look, you know, is it possible? Should I take and consider submitting this to the laboratory? It doesn't hurt to get on the phone and call and ask.

I'm on call. In New York State, we do basically a five-week rotation, and I don't mind the phone call at 2, 3 o'clock in the morning. It takes me a couple of minutes to wake up and usually they're going a hundred miles an hour. It's like, Whooah, whooah, start over again. There is no dumb question.

I would rather have you ask me a simple question about submitting evidence, Is this evidence, than to not ask it at all. Here again, communication is key.

People constantly shed DNA. There's about three trillion cells in the human body. We only need about 100 for DNA analysis. So there's a different perspective from what we've heard about this morning when we were talking about DNA and cells, and I don't have any great pictures of cellsthat I'm going to show you. This is after lunch, so.

With knowledge and a little imagination, what we talked about electric shavers, toothbrushes, hat bands, pillow cases, dental floss, bandages, Pap smears, all host of things that could be potential evidence.

We have to be aware of the broad amount of potential evidence that's out there when we go to a crime scene. Here again, sometimes it's not always apparent. So do not hesitate to call the laboratory, contact them and ask them.

Second of all, how do I take care of this evidence? If I can recognize it, how do I take care of it? Collection and preservation is critical for the reliability of evidence, DNA evidence and the admissibility of evidence.

Contamination is a major issue that law enforcement agencies must be aware of with some, here again, some knowledge, some awareness. It can easily be overcome, and it should not be an issue, but there's different types of contamination. There's cross-contamination.

In other words if someone is using tweezers and the gloves and they're not changing it and they're using it from one piece of evidence to the next on through, things like that is what we have to be concerned about.

Self contamination whereby our own officers that are collecting it, he or she can actually contaminate the evidence. The day of going to a crime, crime scene and probably where everybody who is there in that scene giving a buccal swab is probably not that faraway.

Off-site contamination, materials being transported on shoes, clothing, things like that we're going to have to be aware of.

Here again, when you have a crime scene, the first thing you should ask yourself is, Is everybody here at the crime scene necessary? If they're not necessary, why are they even there.

One of the other things, the third initiative we're working in New York State to deal with that issue alone is we're right now in the stages of having a vehicle built, we're working on the bid process right now, and one of the main functions of this vehicle is going to be that when you have a crime scene to have one of our people go in with a video unit, a high res video unit to basically keep everybody out.

So that way if we have a colonel, a major, a captain that wants to see the crime scene, there you can see it right there with a live video feed. There's no reason for you to be in there at the crime scene.

The other thing that this provides, too, is from the forensic point of view is, let's say, you have blood spatter on the wall, but you don't have an expert who is right there maybe that can interpret this blood spatter as to whether it's a high velocity spatter indicative of maybe somebody beinghit with a blunt object or whatever, but through this technology, what we're able to do is to be able to have experts in other locations even look at that.

So, here again, this whole field of forensics is changing or providing information to you faster even way beyond just DNA technology that we're talking about.

Then finally, types of contamination or case subjects, allowing access to what we're talking about.

How do you avoid contamination? Very, very simple some of this stuff. What your people need to know. They need to be trained. They need to be educated, and for instance, double glove and change your gloves. Use clean collection instruments. Wrap the items separately and seal.

You heard about plastic versus paper if you're at the grocery store. Well, some of it goes back to very basics of just wrapping things separately, sealing them.

Don't mix the classes of the evidence. Protectively wrap stained items. Air dry. Do not allow items to touch. Then don't reposition items without proper protection.

Also, here again, training and education, anything biological, assume it's infectious. Best approach.

The final thing is, is this a DNA case? We're talking about DNA and we're talking about all of the DNA evidence and what the DNA can do for you, but let's not forget, not all cases are DNA cases, and that's one of the first things that we have to take a look at.

We've heard about the limited resources of the laboratory. One of the things that I get frustrated with is where there is good evidence, non-DNA evidence out there, and they want us to take and do some DNA evidence for icing on the cake and this becomes a real tough, tough issue.

What we all want to do is we ought to be able to analyze, as Paul said, all evidence at the scene. That's what we ultimately want to do. I think everybody would like to do that.

The reality is we just simply can't. There's not enough resources that the laboratories currently have to be able to do that. So one of the things that we have to do is we have to communicate.

When you have a major crime scene, what about getting the laboratory together, the lead investigator together, the prosecutor together and go over the items of evidence maybe even before its analyzed to determine what's going to be probative, what is not going to be probative and getting all of the heads together so you know what can be analyzed, what should be analyzed, what should be analyzed first to give you those leads, to give you that investigative lead and give you that information. That's one of the most critical components. As I said, go back to this keyword communication.

On a major crime scene, the three different groups of the criminal justice community should begetting together to discuss the case to determine what should or should not be done on that and when should it be done, who should do it and what time frame. That shouldn't be done two weeks before it's going to go to trial. It should be done right from the get-go especially on a major case.

What's the definition of a DNA case? It's a case with any biological evidence that will be probative in court where identification is key or necessary to an investigation. If it's not probative, maybe it shouldn't be done.

Steps to building a monster index, that we talked about. Here again, we said DNA evidence awareness, the appropriate handling of the evidence and the maximum case application. Getting together, talking about, We're going to do these five items first to begin with and then we're going to continue on and see where we go from there.

The bottom line that we want to remember is, first of all, getting educated about DNA technology, how to properly utilize DNA technology, when to utilize DNA technology. These are key critical components.

What is DNA evidence? We need training on recognizing what is DNA evidence. Where do I find it? How do I take care of it? These are the things that we need to educate our law enforcement officers about in order to be able to use the technology that we've discussed today.

The benefit of being educated and trained in DNA technology. I want to go over a couple of things. As I said, it leads to good quality leads, faster analysis time and more evidence.

Better utilization of critical law enforcement staff, now that has been alluded to already this morning and we've heard a couple of things regarding the utilization of staff. We've also heard about it costing $127 billion for a victim I think is what the earlier discussion was when we were dealing with, with a particular case, but I want to bring out one other people, and let's talk about the law enforcement staffing.

Is there any law enforcement agency here that wants to raise their hand that says they have got more than enough staff and they don't know what to do with everybody they have? I don't think so. Are there any crime lab directors that would be here? They wouldn't raise their hand either.

The bottom line is there's not anybody in this room that has ample staff to do your job. Here again, go back to what I said earlier, we have to work smarter, more efficiently and more effectively.

In doing that if we apply and utilize some of these technologies that are there, let's take, for instance, this particular slide right here or let's just say hypothetically you have a major homicide and you may throw 20 people at this major homicide, it's pretty major, this major homicide, and if you do not apply the technology, let's say you have got 20 people and it slowly goes down in number of people, but it carries out through to eight months, so at the end of eight months you have two or three detectives or investigators, that's represented by the light blue line in terms ofthose resources you have thrown at them.

Yet, if you're utilizing technology properly because you're aware, you're educated and you're properly trained on how to utilize some of this technology you can throw people 20 at it, but in a relatively short period of time you may have that case where it might be solved in a much quicker time.

The difference between the dark area and light area is that is the resources now that you can apply to some of those other things that you need to that you don't have enough resources to deal with.

So by working efficiently, smarter, more effective, you'll be able to apply your limited resources also the same way more efficiently, more effectively and also smarter, and really that's it. I want to thank everybody.

(Applause.)

CHIEF SANDERS: Does anybody have any questions? Wait a minute. You have to have some kind of questions. They just want to go on break, that's all it is.

Let me ask you something. As great as this stuff is, doing it replaces good, old-fashioned police work? No. And the fact that you get a hit, do you think that solves your case? No.

They're leads. They're investigative tools. I think it's important that we think about that. One of the things I wonder about is that, with this working group that I serve on with the Commission, we developed that trifold that you heard about.

The reason we came up with the trifold was because we talked about the fact that there's a lot of people that don't have computers. A lot of police agencies still don't have computers, especially smaller agencies, so we have this trifold that we sent out that's supposed to be everything that every or what every police officer should know about DNA, how it's disseminated, those kinds of things. I think all of that is important.

We got into this thing with the CD Rom, so we developed -- there's a CD Rom for first responders and initial investigators or crime scene techs, and then a second one that's going to be more in depth than those kinds of things. I think it's the greatest thing since sliced bread.

I've got my officers. I can train them, and then Superintendent Hillard is trying to figure out how is he going to present that to his officers. It's a, it's a whole different thing, so I am just wondering how you guys felt about that.

We've got the entire universe here today as far as law enforcement. Do you guys perceive that as a problem? Do you have any suggestions on how we might overcome some of this stuff? I see. That's the way we're going to play this game. Okay.

DR. COLWELL: I mentioned our forensic courses that Dr. May presents. We take them on the road. We got the CD ROM courses that she has, but we present them. We take quadrants of the state, and we make sure there's a program presented that will reach every law enforcement agency with no more than one-hour driving time because, as you mentioned, they do not have a computer, they do not have a CD ROM, they don't have access to the Internet. That's one way with that part of it.

CHIEF SANDERS: I was hoping we could kick this around a little more because I can see not too far down the road where some of us are going to get blind sided because this is wonderful for you guys to be exposed to it, but if we don't get it exposed to the entire law enforcement community, somebody is going to pay the price and it's always -- they like to -- did somebody raise their hand? Oh, my gosh. I can't see you. Go right ahead. Please. See, I knew if I started doing four score and 20 years ago, our forefathers said, I can do that stuff. Go ahead, sir.

MR. BALDWIN: I'm Allan Baldwin from the great state of Nebraska.

By the way, what you're doing there and with the different ideas is you have to have a variety of different methods to get your message out and those education and training lots, whether it be going to some of the remote agencies or whether it be just shipping some CD ROMs over to some other agencies, a variety of different techniques because that's what we live with out there, a variety of different types of law enforcement agencies. That's it.

CHIEF SANDERS: What about the FOP? I saw you're here. I know my guy, they do this for me. That means dinosaur. They tell me I was a policeman 20 years ago, I don't know anything about it anymore.

But honestly, what is it that the individual officers -- what's your perspective on it how as far as how we educate our officer towards this DNA stuff? And do you think it's necessary that we develop all of these different ways or is there only one solution that you see?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Absolutely. Education is always going to be good, and I don't think we -- being a working sergeant, sometimes we just don't have the time to give our officers the amount of training that they need and, you know, I know from my perspective a lot of my guys, we receive pamphlets on using DNA evidence, and there's just total misunderstanding of what DNA evidence is for. They think it's just for the rape or the homicide.

We've got to get the education out there for the people some way or another just so they know exactly what's going on and the tools that are available to them either for simpler crimes other than the rapes and the murders.

CHIEF SANDERS: That's one of the things that we've discussed considerably on the Commission as well because I keep saying, I don't have murders in my community, we don't have rapes, those kinds of things as a normal course of activity.

We have a whole lot of burglaries and that kind of thing and that this technology ought to beapplied the same way, which causes another problem as far as then you have got to make sure that you don't overwhelm your laboratories, but I'm going to tell you that in my community when the people find out how much we can do with DNA, they're going to be wondering why we're not doing something with it with burglaries and stuff. Superintendent, I saw you wanted to say something.

THE SUPERINTENDENT: Yes. How many agencies got that pamphlets?

CHIEF SANDERS: How many agencies here represented got that trifold pamphlet we sent out? That's good.

THE SUPERINTENDENT: We have a lot to get out.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yes, we still do.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: How many didn't get it?

CHIEF SANDERS: How many did not get the pamphlet? Dr. Forman, do you have some pamphlets?

DR. FORMAN: We have pamphlets and, and what we need are their names and their agency numbers.

CHIEF SANDERS: I don't know if you can hear her from the back of the room. She said if you make sure we get your name and agency, we will make sure we will get the stuff to you if you don't take it with you now. Yes, sir. Go ahead.

MR. KILEY: Bill Kiley from Suffolk County in New York. With regards to getting the word out, one of the vehicles that I'd recommend really looking at is web based. A lot of agencies still might not have Internet access through the agencies, but somewhere in that community it's there and 20-minute web-based training I think can be accessible to most of us around the nation.

CHIEF SANDERS: I don't know. Of course, I'm a country boy, but I know that to me, interactive stuff is better because I can read that thing, but what I read and understand may not be what was intended. That's one of the good things about that CD ROM is because it has a question-and-answer period, and if you don't get it right, it tells you right away kind of thing, but how you could do that. Yes, ma'am.

MS. MUNDY: Another suggestion that Seattle Police lack is we have no training on DNA and we didn't have any trainers. So the best source we went to was our state crime lab and the head of the state crime lab came to us and trained us. So that's a really good resource.

CHIEF SANDERS: I see Dr. Forman back there saying we should either talk louder or use those microphones, but basically what you said was that in Seattle that they didn't have the trainers for the DNA so they went to the crime lab and the head of their crime lab actually did it.

Actually, that's one of those great things about being on this Commission. The people that are in the crime labs will definitely teach you how the clock works I can tell you. So anything else? Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I think the biggest problem is that most people, especially the patrolman have no idea what the crime lab does. Until I became a detective and got into specialization, I had no idea what they did. Basically, I thought it ended me at the patrol level and that was it. I never knew what happened to it when it went out farther.

CHIEF SANDERS: He makes a very valid point. He was saying that when he was a patrol officer he didn't know what the crime lab did and he wasn't sure what his responsibility was.

I think that's one of the things when we were talking about with first responder that we're talking about is of utmost importance is because it all starts there. As you know if you have been a detective long and all, that if the first guy doesn't do what he's supposed to, the rest of us suffer. I mean, it's that kind of thing. So you do make a very valid point. Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I don't think it makes any difference what vehicle you use, whether it be CD ROM or anything else, until you guarantee the funding, then you can have good quality hands-on education is what I understand we are talking about. Doing it is not going to make any difference. Funding is the key in all of it.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yes. For my own personal benefit, does everybody here pretty much agree with me though that police officers want to know that police officers care and they'll do what they're afforded the opportunity to do or am I living in a dream world? Do you know what I mean? Because I'm getting close to retiring, you know, but I mean honestly, that's what I believe. I think that if we afford them the opportunity that people are going to be amazed at the results. Is that pretty much a consensus in this room?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yes, sir.

MR. RADOSEVICH: Fred Radosevich, New Mexico Association of Chiefs of Police, but I think one thing we're overlooking are the more police officers we train, if the labs can't handle the caseload, like in New Mexico now they are 150 cases behind, we've got rape cases they're not even testing because they can't keep up with them, the labs are going to get so overloaded the police officers will eventually say, There's no sense in doing this because they're not processing it anyway. So we have to make sure that not only are we doing the education level, but we're securing the funding and the resources for the laboratory to be able to take on that.

It's kind of like your drug cases and stuff, when you hire a bunch more police officers. You put your narcotics use together and all of a sudden you flood the courts, you flood the DA's office without any help. It's not doing any good.

So I think you have to look at the whole picture and make sure we train the officers and also make sure that the labs have the resources available to them to do the analysis.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yes. I think you make some excellent points. I think that the Commission is actually aware of that for sure. I know --

MR. COONROD: I would like to make a comment in reference to that. You're absolutely right.

One of the things that we just did is two weeks ago I was down here, again, at the invitation of NIJ to do clips on our crime laboratory improvement dealing with funding, and we've heard there's a lot of different funding issuing, the National Forensic Science Improvement Act, the State's Coalition is very involved with that, and fortunately the late Senator Coverdell was the sponsor of that, but you're absolutely right in terms of we have to take and work together between all of the agencies. That's a real critical key component, and I think that -- that's why I said communication is a key. We can't forget that.

CHIEF SANDERS: But in addition to that, you might -- when's he's talking about communicating, one of the things that we talked about with the Commission is the fact that you're going to want to talk to your laboratory about what they want you to submit and all of those kinds of things, because, you're right, if you're overwhelmed no matter how much funding we get, that's one of the arguments they always make. If you build the prison, we've got the police who will fill it up. There's no doubt about it. We're that good at what we do.

MR. COONROD: One of the things that came out in the recent Summit though which I think is interesting, and this was an idea that came from DEA, and that is where for some of the agents they have in the field there are so many support personnel, basically a ratio, if you want to call it that, between support people or lab people and the number of agents that are out there, and that was brought up at the last clip summit meeting that we had with NIJ, and I think that was a very important message that I know that I will try to take and push, and that is you can't increase one without the either. That have to work hand in hand, that's exactly the point that you're making, and we may have to take a look at their ratio or if law enforcement is brought up to a point, we also have to take and build up at that ratio the support services for that in order to allow you to do your job and provide those investigative leads to you, etcetera. So I think the two kind of go hand in hand. We can't split those.

DR. COLWELL: Darrell, you'll be pleased to know that the University of Chicago in 1959 developed a model that's never been used by the law enforcement.

On point with what you're saying, Keith, and that is that you reach a point of diminishing returns with the number of officers you assign to a case, and the same thing applies if you hire a lot of police officers and investigators and you don't have the prosecutors or the jails and the other components, it's not going to work.

CHIEF SANDERS: Go ahead, sir.

MR. LATTA: Yes. My name is Joel Latta. I'm a lieutenant in the Burbank Police Department in Burbank, California, and the Executive Director of the International Association for Property and Evidence. We put training seminars on around the country on how to imagine property routes.

Nothing I have heard today has talked about where are we going to put all of this stuff, and this is not in the form of a question, but kind of a comment and it might bring some -- there's a lot of detectives around the country that don't want to get rid of anything forever because of maybe technology in the future, and I think one of the things when we talk about staffing and so many support staff for those that are at the crime scene, as we collect this stuff over the years, we're going to need many large warehouses to keep all of our stuff unless we come up with some standards in saying, Do we really need the entire mattress? Or the standard says, No, we don't need the mattress. We need the cutout out of it, but the detectives, if we don't train them properly, will want the whole bedroom, and that's happening right now.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yes. Of course, this is just one segment of what's going on, but I'm sure before it's over, you'll hear talk about we've got demonstrations about how they had to buy freezer trucks in Orange County so that they could store the different stuff that they were storing.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Los Angeles is doing that also.

CHIEF SANDERS: Yes. At least the Commission is very, very aware of it. You were going to say something all of the way in the back? Yes, sir.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes. Getting back to an educational standpoint, I came to this conference thinking I was going to be bamboozled with a bunch of scientific talk, and what I found is that it's been extremely simplified where let's face it, most of us that have gone into law enforcement did so because we were not smart enough to get a real job.

CHIEF SANDERS: Now you know what I mean by I have been keeping them grounded. That's what they were talking about.

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I think this is what we need to take back to our agencies and to our officers out on the road is just the simple thing like, What is DNA evidence. Anything biological.

I picked up something great there that I can take back to my evidence technicians, to my officers, and I think what we need to do also is publicize the positive cases where we are getting convictions and clearances.

Obviously, Dr. Forman still has an axe to grind over the O.J. case because she brought it up so many times, but I think some of the officers look at that particular case when there was such monumental evidence and there was an acquittal.

I think people still look at that, Well, yeah, we've got DNA, but it doesn't always work. And I think we need to publicize the positives when, like they touched on earlier. When there's a good case, where we do get a conviction, let's get it out there. Let the citizens, let the people know justwhat we're doing with DNA technology.

CHIEF SANDERS: And Dr. Forman can speak for herself, but surely, surely you agree with, at least to me, in that one of the things that the O.J. Simpson trial pointed out to us was how bad it is if we don't do our job and how simple it is to contaminate that evidence and take this great, wonderful technology and put it in a negative light, and I would think that that's the only reason that Dr. Forman uses that case so that you understand that this is great and all of the stuff was there, but if it's not handled correctly or even if it is and we leave that appearance that we didn't do it properly.

I think that's of the reasons I believe it's so important that we do this education thing, we do it will correctly so that people can't look at us and say, Oh, my gosh. Sanders missed up this and some killer went free because I didn't do my job as the first guy on the scene.

That's really my message is today because that's what I believe, is that to me, the O.J. Simpson trial, is the benchmark, and that's what made us all vulnerable and those kinds of things. So any other questions? Go ahead. You're retired, aren't you?

UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes, I am. Yes, sir, I am.

CHIEF SANDERS: Semi retired. Yes, sir. Go ahead.

MR. McINTYRE: Bill McIntyre for Atlantic County, New Jersey.

CHIEF SANDERS: Wait a minute. Let them get the microphone because they can't hear you.

MR. McINTYRE: With my mouth? Bill McIntyre for Atlantic County, New Jersey. I was a homicide detective for some years up there, and two things you should know about.

About training, you can do it cheaper than you think. We got tired of waiting for somebody to give us training. We put our heads together. When I say we, some of fellows and women who were in the crime scene working group and myself and McLaughlin, they funded. We had people come in.

We trained 235 police officers from nine different states in Toronto for basically nothing. It was a free seminar. It didn't cost them anything. Just get there, and we had two days of training. We had a lot of positive comments about it. You can do this. If you want to find out how to do it, see me and talk to me and I'll tell you how to do it.

The other thing is just because we don't have the technology today and the storage today doesn't meant that we shouldn't collect it and preserve it for tomorrow. This is the beginning, not the end.

I see cases of 1991, old cold homicide cases that we did, RFLP did not give us the answers we wanted. STRs will, and when STRs won't, Y chromosome may.

These are things of the future. The future is going to be incredibly bright, and I'm kind of upset that I had to retire or decided to retire, but -- I didn't have to retire.

CHIEF SANDERS: We won't talk about that.

MR. McINTYRE: We won't comment on that. The future is very bright and very exciting and you should be excited about it, and we do need the funding, and we need the funding for labs and storage, and as administrators and chiefs, you should be advocates for that, and if you're not, shame on you. You have to get excited about this stuff.

CHIEF SANDERS: Thank you. Dave has some sort of announcement to make and then -- never mind, I was going to tell you we're going on break you may not listen to his announcement. Go right ahead.

MR. COFFMAN: No several people asked me for the information I had on the types of offenses that people commit while they're on community service. They made a hundred copies of that page, and I'm just going to -- I'll leave it up here on this front table and you can just pick it up. So the people I said I'll fax it to, this is it.

CHIEF SANDERS: Any other questions? I don't know -- oh, there she is. Robin, do you have any idea how long we're going on break or anything. We're going to reconvene at 3:45. Thank you very much.

(Recess taken -- 3:30 p.m.)

(After recess -- 3:45 p.m.)

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