D.C.’s top forensic scientist has been transferred out of the police department amid an increasingly bitter conflict for control of the city’s crime laboratory.
William Vosburgh was brought in amid much fanfare to assist construction of a long-delayed, $140 million crime laboratory and to build a top-flight forensic science program to match it. But after months of conflict with police department brass, he’s being “detailed” to the mayor’s office, sources with intimate knowledge of the controversy told The Examiner.
At the heart of the matter is whether the crime lab will be independent or under the authority of the police department. Vosburgh has argued internally that the lab has to be independent to prevent police from influencing forensic tests; his boss, Assistant Chief Peter Newsham, wants the lab to report to him.
Both men testified in a hearing before the D.C. Council earlier this month.
Newsham declined comment after the hearing. Vosburgh said reports of his conflict with Newsham were “no more than usual for any office.”
The stakes are enormous: Without a working crime lab, the District is sitting on thousands of untested samples from rapes and homicides. There are about 4,000 unsolved homicides on the department’s books.
But experts say it’s not enough to have a crime lab: The city also has to build an effective one. In Houston, officials are still reeling from revelations that its technicians were poorly trained, kept shoddy records and spoiled evidence with leaky roofs and bad habits. Dozens of cases have had to be retested. One prominent criminologist called Houston’s criminal justice system “completely dysfunctional.”
There have been similar scandals in crime labs in Oklahoma City, Montana, Washington state and even at the FBI lab at Quantico — where the District’s samples were being tested until Vosburgh took over and overhauled the District’s staff.
The National Academy of Sciences recently published a massive study arguing for independent crime labs.
The Fenty administration has repeatedly claimed that the forensics lab is its “top public safety priority,” but the project has dragged on for years and now is not scheduled to open until 2011 at the earliest.
“They’re compromising public safety,” police union Chairman Kris Baumann said, calling the delays “baffling.”
Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, a longtime advocate for a modern crime lab, says the Fenty administration is dithering. Fenty’s predecessor, Anthony Williams, had promised to have a crime lab up and running by now, Mendelson said.
“That’s not my opinion,” he said. “The timelines don’t lie.”
Efforts to reach Fenty spokeswoman Mafara Hobson were unsuccessful.
