The D.C. police commander overseeing the city’s long-stalled efforts to establish a DNA laboratory has been stripped of his authority over the lab’s technicians, The Examiner has learned.
As commander of the D.C. police mobile crime unit, Christopher M. LoJacono was responsible for recruiting, training and supervising DNA scientists. In an official communique from police Chief Cathy Lanier, marked “Not for Press” and sent out over the weekend, the scientists were transferred to the supervision of William Vosburgh. He is a forensic dentist originally brought in as a consultant to D.C.’s DNA lab but then hired on as full-time employee of the D.C. police department.
Lanier and her staff downplayed the significance of the move, saying it was merely “administrative.”
“It was just for the efficiency of running the whole program,” Lanier told The Examiner. “We wanted to have them under the right manager.”
But many inside and outside the department have come to see LoJacono, who was elevated to his position by the previous chief, Charles Ramsey, as an obstacle to progress, sources said.
In the nearly four years that LoJacono was in charge of the DNA program, not one technician gained federal certification for testing DNA evidence. LoJacono couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.
Without its own crime lab, D.C.’s police force is handicapped in developing critical evidence.
The FBI lab at Quantico processes all of D.C.’s crime scene evidence. But the FBI has cases from all over the world and has told the District — which accounts for one-third of its workload — that it can no longer carry the department.
D.C. police have a massive backlog of unsolved rapes and homicides and, without their own lab, can’t determine how many crimes are linked.
Vosburgh blamed the problems on the low pay of D.C.’s DNA technicians, saying that the program had experienced 100 percent turnover since it began. He also said accounts of a rift between him and LoJacono were “blown out of proportion.”
“I like to argue, but I don’t like to fight,” Vosburgh told The Examiner. “He and I argue, but we don’t fight because we both care about this. There’s no question that he’s talented.”
Got a tip on the D.C. DNA program? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail [email protected].
