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Recommendation for (This original article is the text of the presentation presented at the August 5, 2000, SCAFO Meeting, Lake San Marcos, CA. Thanks to SCAFO 2nd V.P. George Durgin for arranging for this outstanding speaker and providing this text.)
Speaker STEVEN STAVELY, DIRECTOR Attorney General Bill Lockyer wanted to be here personally. He did ask that I pass on his best wishes and apology for not being able to personally speak with you. Lockyer is California's 34th Attorney General and his mission statement is simply to be the best attorney general we have ever had. He defines that as being the most open, active and responsive attorney general. He sees his role as supporting local governments and those of us in his own department who are providing direct services to and supporting local agencies. Einstein said in 1927 that a life of service to others is a life well spent – and I agree with that – but service with honor and duty to the higher cause of Justice is what makes what we do truly important, so vital to our society and to the whole idea of America. California currently has approximately 34 million residents. It's the largest state in the union in population, third in land mass and the sixth largest economy in the world. California's population is anticipated to grow by 20 million persons in the next 20 years roughly a million new residents per year. California will continue to grow and change and become something even more special and unique in all of the world. So it is within that context that we must look at the system of Justice and the idea of Justice in California. It is within that context that we must improve and grow the Forensic Sciences Services in our great state to insure justice is done in our criminal justice system. In an era of increased scrutiny of police practices and concern for the reliability of eyewitness testimony, scientific evidence becomes ever more important – provides independent and objective verification of witness statements. Anyone who has been a police officer anytime at all knows the fallibility of eyewitnesses. Anyone who has been in the forensic science business as you have for any time at all knows that our knowledge and science get better each year and what we thought was perfect 30 years ago may in fact have changed. Our citizens are now very aware of scientific evidence. Things like DNA and fingerprint evidence from CAL--ID are on every cop show on TV and in news articles in the press. Our citizens have been made aware through highly publicized cases such as O.J. Simpson. Quality Assurance has become a critical requirement in crime labs. Such quality assurance is a critical part of developing the faith of the people we serve in the idea of justice and thus the justice system itself. Labs can and must insure quality by way of either or both accreditation and or a system of routine proficiency tests to demonstrate quality assurance. Certification programs are available for latent print examiners, crime scene technicians, and criminalists and we must expand those. There was a study a short time back published in the “Training” magazine where the author noted that those in private sector service organizations that are successful spend the equivalent of 5% of their salary budget on training of all kinds. What do you spend? From what I have seen 1% is a big deal. That is no longer acceptable. The world is changing too fast and if Justice is to keep pace we must be on the cutting edge of training and technology. I personally advocate that we should be investing in our scientist, technicians, police officers, detectives, and special agents in training the equivalent of 5% of their salary. If you think 5% is a huge number let me note to you that overtime costs for the average Orange County and Los Angeles County municipal police department is about 9% of salary. For sheriff departments it is 11% to 13%. No matter how hard one tries, there are base line overtime costs in police service that one cannot get below at current personnel levels. Although I hate the phrase “they are simply a cost of doing business”, we still want to cut overtime further – well what shift don't we cover, what homicide call don't we take – it's a cost of doing business. In the world just around the corner – training and technology costs are just a cost of doing business. We must push hard, very hard for these increases – the whole idea of Justice depends upon it. Look at CCI. A wonderful and very useful tool. Under funded and thus under utilized. We must grow CCI to serve all of our needs – I hope you will help us and lobby your appointed or elected CEO. Lobby your legislative body and lobby our state legislators. Help them all understand what CCI means to the future of forensic science in California and to the cause of Justice. We must do the same with technology. They will say, “look what CAL--ID cost” – “look what we are spending on DNA” – “how can we afford it?” -- they will ask. I think it was Thomas Jefferson who said it was better by far to let 10 guilty men go free then punish one wrongly convicted. He reasoned that such was the cost of Justice in our society. Technology has, can, and will in the future help us insure Justice. We must however push the envelope for it to fully serve Justice. We – the public service professionals must be willing to advance the technology with research, trying new ideas and new things and be willing to change our minds if we have gone in the wrong direction. True, our forensic efforts must be conservative in their approach because rigorous science demands a conservative approach, but we must also be willing to push the technology very hard to live to Jefferson's vision where victims are assured crimes will be solved, where guilty persons know they will be caught and where innocent persons can rest comfortably they will be found so. We must push, and our elected and appointed leaders must push. It's our responsibility to educate those decision makers so they are able time after time, year after year to make the right decisions and support training and technology in the future. We must discover new ways to use databases and joint investigative teams of all kinds to help lead us to new investigative paradigm – physical evidence can solve crimes. We must find new and more effective ways to give detectives investigative leads. CAL--ID and other AFIS systems are early examples – DNA now has the same potential for cases with biological evidence. Automated ballistics information systems are other potential examples. Sure there are all kinds of public policy issues in these systems. Some may see IBIS or DNA systems as intrusions into individual privacy, so care must be taken in our education of elected and appointed leaders to point out the potential for conflict, but these and other systems must also go forward. We can help our elected and appointed leaders through those issues but we must do so with one voice. We must speak as a forensic science system of California, not as an Orange County, Santa Clara, or BFS lab system – we must speak and be heard as one system – with one goal – a Justice system which has many owners, and many leaders, but a common overarching goal – rigorous science leading to finding and convicting the guilty and insuring the innocent are protected. We know that we will shortly have on line portable breath test results beamed to the lab via satellite. We can see the day very soon when live scan will reach into radio cars. We know DNA analysis on a chip which can screen for biological weapons using PCR in the field is not far off. All are examples of some of the new technology just right around the corner or in some cases arriving as we speak. Yet today at the same time, some of our labs are burdened with old and battered equipment, inadequate facilities, and records systems and the like which take more time than they save. We must push all of the elements that make up or forensic lab system in California. We see old and cold programs such as Orange County's TracKrs spinning up around the country. These take advantage of new technology and databases to re--visit unsolved murders. We must make sure we make maximum use of current and future technology. Another example and one which Governor Davis himself has pushed very hard is the effort to focus on analyzing evidence in suspectless rape cases to search against DNA databanks. $50 million project to do DNA profiling on all the backlogged unsolved rape cases in the state and this money is real and it will arrive and it will solve crimes. But what is next? I am not sure, but I know it's coming and we must look for those opportunities for improvement, not as individual labs or organizations, but as the forensic component of the criminal justice system in California. I think, if we do it right, one of the most important political and planning efforts we can make to insure justice in our great state is Bill Lockyer's – Attorney General's Task Force on Forensic Services. This task force which is staffed by lab directors, criminalists, representatives of the League of Cities, the CSAC, state chiefs, state sheriffs, the Attorney General's staff, and others will look at current status and needs of crime labs, but also identify future needs including education, research and development of new technology. The boss has given us very clear direction with this effort. He wants it to result in not another report to sit on a shelf, not another political process that looks good and goes nowhere, but rather he has asked us to do this to insure that Californians now and in the future have the best forensic science system to support the search for Justice – not just the best system in America, but the best system in the world. He has been clear that he sees this as a system not run by any one political body, but rather one run by lots of political bodies, a system which can and does act as if it is one system, not competing, but collaborating, sharing, and growing together. He has been clear in his direction that in his vision – Justice cannot be achieved if the forensic service provided in El Centro is less effective, less complete, or less able than those provided in San Francisco. The people of Alpine County are not less, nor more entitled to a quality Justice system than are the people of Santa Clara County. A key piece to that idea is first rate, modern, well equipped, and well--trained forensic scientists and technicians. The future is bright for forensic science, for California and for the cause of Justice in our society. We can get there, but not without hard work. We can get there but not without your continued dedicated service. We can get there but not without taking a chance and pushing the envelope of education, training, technology, and making sure that all of our elected leaders from the city council person in Huntington Beach to Senate Pro Tem Burton are fully and honestly educated on the subject at hand. We can get there but not without a system wide, and unilateral belief in the vision and most importantly in the cause of Justice in our society. Thank you! (Director Staveley is in charge of the Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement, Bureau of Investigation, Western States Intelligence Network, and Bureau of Forensic Science. He is the past Chief of Police of Belmont and La Habra Police Departments. Director Staveley started his law enforcement career in 1968 with the Buena Park Police Department where he was a crime scene investigator.)
This article was printed in “THE PRINT” |