[Music] hello and welcome to this edition of on the beat I'm Sergeant Ed wesing here with us today is Commander Bill Peters here to discuss with us the new state-of-the-art forensic Services building Commander Peters with our city having budget shortfalls as if we've heard in the news both locally and on a national and state Lev can you tell us how was it that we were able to afford such a state-ofthe-art facility and and actually how was it funded sure and these things take quite a bit of time for us to plan for some of these Public Safety buildings the actual planning stage started back in the year 2000 so eight years ago uh and then we did a feasibility study and it went to uh the voters for a bond in 2004 the voters thankfully passed that Bond and enabled us to have this new State art facility is fantastic can you tell us a little bit about the old lab facility uh and why we need this new facility in the first place sure well Mesa is a large department and it's a large city uh and we obviously have have quite a bit of crime within that City that we need to resolve um the old lab was in the basement of the city court building uh and they were so confined in there they actually had one room where three disciplines worked our our Firearms our controlled substance and DNA all working out of one room and trying to share uh some of the tables for examinations and that sort of thing some DNA processing was being done in old police hold sales we used to hold prisoners if you can imagine that um the identification Bureau was an entirely separate building so we had about 15,000 square feet split between two buildings and very very confined uh locations now I've heard that some of the new construction uh has some state-of-the a HVAC systems and ventilation systems were there any safety issues for our prior lab employees in the old facility Well I'll give you an example for our Controlled Substances let's say we had a a seure a bulk a bulk drug seizure and we had a large amount of marijuana that had to be forensically tested we'd bring that into the lab but there was no ventilation for it and so your Firearms folks your DNA folks the other areas that were working within that small area had to inhale a lot of the uh the smell of those bulk drugs as they came through so absolutely having this new ventilation system having the space is going to make us a lot more efficient it's a lot safer environment for employees on top of that sharing uh sharing tables as they were before you had to be extra extra careful for issues such as cross-contamination this lab is specifically designed to prevent some of that potential for cross contamination great um now we see this on TV all the time uh shows like CSI Etc um about laboratory work in forensics how long has the city of Mesa Police Department actually had an operational crime laboratory our crime lab actually began in 1980 so some time ago and it started with just one uh one criminalist one scientist and it was a control substance testing and grew over the years and we now have over 66 employees working in our lab and identification bureaus okay uh what type of new equipment or technology uh has come along with this project to make us more efficient and better at conducting those different analyses sure aside from just the mere workflow uh and being const constricted as they were and basically working out of closets there there are some significant uh areas of improvement that we're going to be able to do now uh in DNA we're going to be able to purchase and are purchasing new equipment uh through this this uh uh Bond that's going to allow us to process DNA quicker faster more efficient get that back to our detective so we can arrest the criminals uh in our toxicology area we're having new equipment coming in that's going to allow us to test uh for drugs in people's blood as opposed to urine as are currently being um tested that's going to make us our our our conviction rates will improve uh the quality of our um do why and manslaughter type cases involving U drug and alcohol impaired uh drivers will improve um and we have a a really state-of-the-art Firearms forensic Firearms examination area in in the basement of the building uh in our in our old lab if you were to extend your elbows you would touch either side of the wall the old firing range there was barely any room in there to maneuver at all uh this one has a large firing firing range it has a large storage area for various firearms for ex for for examinations um and uh it just enables us to do things that before we we never had would have had the room to do okay there have been discussions in the media about Outsourcing uh uh DNA uh corology work for example is the idea behind this new facility also to make the police department self-sufficient laboratory where we don't have to ship items out to other labs to conduct that work at Cost well there is an expense one of the expenses before for in wasn't so much in the corology in the na but but it was in toxicology and shipping blood out to DPS who now charges us to test for for drugs in that blood we'll be able to do that in-house now and and no longer have that expense which was becoming significant now we go to detective Steve Barry who's at the forensic Services building with lab director Deb Rector thanks Sergeant wesing I'm over here in the new Mesa Police Department forensic Services section uh this is a fantastic new facility here with me today I've got the admin Ator of the forensic service section for the M Police Department Deb recor Deb how are you today I'm fine Steve how about you I'm doing great tell me about this fantastic new facility that we have it it's so much bigger than anything that I've seen before certainly here at the Meson Police Department um yes the facility is uh definitely much larger than our former facility um in this building we have uh approximately 46,000 Square ft of uh laboratory and office space our former facilities um was approximately 15 ,000 we have all the analysts in one building instead of being split between two different buildings which is great for the interaction and the communication between individuals um within disciplines but also between disciplines which was uh sometimes difficult to do in our former facility tell me a little bit about the different types of work that actually goes on in the building certainly there are several different forensic science disciplines in which um our employees will do analysis for uh in our Laboratory um we basically have a toxicology unit which is responsible for doing blood alcohol analyses and urine drug screening analysis that's primarily from DUI cases or driving Under the Influence we have a um forensic biology section that is responsible for doing corology and DNA testing so they'll do analyses on um sexual assault cases uh you know homicide cases basically anything where there are biological fluids that might be left behind or where we might need to um col DNA from from an individual we also have a Laten print unit uh these are the individuals that will process um various crime scenes to um find fingerprints that are left at the scene they will collect evidence they will also do various chemical and uh powder processing in order to visualize those prints that are left at the scene we and then they'll do the comparison um you know between what they collect at the scene and what uh is you know known that we have collected as well we also have a controlled substances unit they're responsible for anal analyzing uh Contraband substances pills and powders you know pharmaceutical compounds uh marijuana that are confiscated from individuals we have a crime scene unit who is responsible for responding to various crime scenes to uh evaluate the scene collect evidence bring that evidence back so that it can be um submitted to the evidence unit and available to our analysts uh we have a photo lab and um we have a Firearms unit the Firearms unit is responsible for analyzing you know weapons cartridge cases bullets that are found at scenes testing the functionality of weapons determining U muzzle to Target distances uh a whole array of various um analytical analyses that are required boy that's uh that's probably more than most people ever realize was going on here in the crime lab here in Mesa again having this uh facility and new building and having all of this stuff all Under One Roof is fantastic and you know looking around at all the new and different technology that's now available to us all of this has certainly got to be a great asset to the city and the surrounding communities uh most definitely um you know and we as uh employees of the police department recognize that as well we're very thankful to the you know the voters who approved uh the bond bond election in 2004 for this facility uh the employees who are working in this facility definitely you know recognize the the merits of it the the the benefits the additional safety uh features that we have in this facility that we didn't have in the other facility so uh and it's going to be a big benefit to the the city as a whole because we have various areas where for example um multiple analyses were were being done but you'd have to wait until one person was done with a particular counter before somebody else could use it now each of the disciplines have their own area so multiple analyses in many circumstances can be occurring at the same time great hey Deb thanks for your time this is uh again a fantastic building and uh look forward to a lot of the great work that's going to come out of here thank you Steve Sergeant wesing I'll toss it back to you in the studio as you can tell this is a great facility we really look forward to all the things that are going to happen here thank you detective Barry Commander Peters recently we had a public open house uh can you explain to us a little bit about that open house and why we felt it was necessary to open this facility to the public well first and foremost that facility belongs to the public they're the ones that voted for it they're the ones that enabled the city to to reach these the state of Art Level with this with this building uh and so I felt very very compelled that that the public had a right to come and see what it was that that Bond money purchased so we had a team that was put put together uh they did a fantastic job they set up a a mock crime scene and as the public came through with tours they would view the crime scene and the evidence we would collect there and then they went to the different parts within the laboratory where we would forensically examine that evidence and then showed we showed them how we would then solve it using forensic science so it it was really a great opportunity we had over 600 people come through uh and and the feedback that we had was just fantastic thank you thank you Commander Peters and thank you the citizens of Mesa who voted for this bond election in 2004 making this project possible I'm Sergeant Ed wesing we'll see you on the next on the beat he [Music]