Fulfilling high-tech hopes
After years of neglect, Essex County's crime scene unit gets a new facility
BY WILLIAM KLEINKNECHT
October 24, 2006
Instead of scribbling crime scene diagrams on pieces of paper, Essex County investigators will now re-create murders, rapes and fatal car accidents in 3-D computer simulations. Rather than crawling under cars on the greasy floor of a tow garage, they will put the autos on a lift in a secure vehicle-processing area.
And the county's detectives will join the rest of America in taking pictures with digital cameras instead of processing roles of 35mm film.
Essex County, which has long had one of the most poorly equipped crime scene units in the state, yesterday unveiled one of the best -- a 15,000-square-foot facility in Orange brimming with enough high-tech equipment to outfit an episode of "CSI."
"Now we won't be running around asking who has the Kodak camera straight from Kmart," Essex County Prosecutor Paula Dow said as she unveiled the $2.5 million facility in front of elected officials and the state's law enforcement elite.
Dow motioned to blown-up photographs of the cramped garage on North Broad Street in Newark that once housed the crime scene unit and hinted that previous county executives and prosecutors had fallen down on the job.
"Look at the pictures of then and look where we are now," she said. "It's an absolute disgrace that it was allowed to get to that."
Crime-scene unit investigators had complained about their poor working conditions and substandard equipment for years. In the spring of 2004, the prosecutor's professional standards unit conducted an internal review and found crime scene analysis was in disarray.
The report noted how evidence was often poorly labeled and stacked in hallways without surveillance cameras, fire equipment or alarms. Guns were poorly secured, and there was no computer to catalog evidence or tie it to specific cases.
A Star-Ledger series published at the end of January on the reasons behind the county's low homicide conviction rate found examples in which the unit's failure to collect key evidence at crime scenes had led to the collapse of murder prosecutions.
At the time of the report, the unit had five investigators responding to some 400 crime scenes a year, with only a single person collecting evidence in typical murder cases.
The adverse publicity helped speed up reforms. County Executive Joseph DiVincenzo said yesterday that starting in January, his staff met with members of the prosecutor's office every Monday to plan the location and design of a new unit and the purchase of equipment.
DiVincenzo said the state Attorney General's Office agreed to allow the project to be funded out of an unused drug forfeiture fund of $10 million -- with no cost to county taxpayers.
"This money was just sitting there because of the previous neglect of other prosecutors," DiVincenzo said.
The building housing the new unit on Thomas Boulevard was an old county public words storage facility that DiVincenzo had refurbished by public works employees with guidance from the prosecutor's office.
In deciding what equipment to purchase, the prosecutor's office relied on recommendations issued by the State Police in May. Robert Carella, the captain of detectives who oversees the unit with Lt. Arnold Valentin, said he also visited crime scene units in other counties and adopted the best ideas of each of them.
The unit now has six vehicles equipped with digital cameras, portable generators and lighting, and special lasers and alternate lighting sources that illuminate microscopic fibers and body fluids.
The facility also has special heated chambers for quickly drying blood-soaked clothing, an evidence storage room with 50 times the capacity of the old unit, and a digital photo room for processing crime scene images.
Fingerprint technicians have a laboratory with ultraviolet lights and other equipment for identifying prints on objects, and special air-tight chambers that allows investigators to use powders and solutions without being exposed toxins.
"Prior to this, we used a fish tank turned upside down," Carella said. "Not exactly ideal for containing the chemicals."
In addition to upgrading the facility, Dow said she has doubled the number of personnel in the unit and is committed to having at least two of its investigators at every homicide scene.
"You should have high expectations of what we can and will accomplish with this facility," she told the gathering.
Among the top law enforcement officials on hand for the ribbon-cutting were U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie, Attorney General Stuart Rabner, Major James Fallon of the State Police, County Sheriff Armando Fontoura and Garry McCarthy, the new police director in Newark.
Lt. James Molinaro of the State Police Crime Scene Investigation Unit, who also attended the event, said he was pleased to see the prosecutor's office had adopted virtually every one of his unit's recommendations.
He said he hoped the office would also ensure that sufficient staff remained assigned to the unit, especially on nights and weekends when most violent crimes occur, and that it continues with plans for purchasing key equipment. Still to be added is a link to the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System.
"They look like they're on their way," he said. "But what happens over the next year will be a real test."
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