Have you ever wondered what really goes on at real-life crime labs?
Named after Sir Alec Jeffreys, known as the father of DNA fingerprinting, the facility in Wakefield is home to West Yorkshire Police’s Scientific Support Department, the force’s imaging and scenes of crime units and its DNA Bureau.
It is also home to about a million fingerprint files, including those of the Yorkshire Ripper.
“If there’s a murder anywhere in Yorkshire samples will end up here.”
Those are the words of Frances Senior, area forensic manager for the Scientific Support Service.
“All the evidence comes into the reception area. It is then logged and labelled. Items come here from across four forces so it’s the hub of the whole facility. Items then end up in the system and are sent to different labs for examination.”
Jackie Barker, sample reception manager said: “We have all sorts coming in, from clothing and footwear to chewing gum and condoms.
“At the other side of the scale we’ve had mattresses and even doors brought in.”
The centre opened three years ago and provides a service for all four of Yorkshire’s police forces.
Fingerprints and footprints are among the main forensic work carried out at the facility, as head of identification bureau Andy Rowley explained.
“The identification bureau was formed out the merger of the Fingerprint and Footwear bureaux across Yorkshire.
“We deal with fingerprints, footwear and handwriting in this department and have around 80 staff.
“Staff will carry out footwear comparisons. So, for example, the shoes are provided from the suspect, and impression marks are taken from the crime scene by CSIs.
“A test impression from the shoe will be made using a gel which produces a lift.
“That can then be scanned into a computer and sent electronically to us to begin comparisons.
“It is then compared with marks recovered from the scene. We usually use an aluminium powder for fingerprints and gel for footprints.
“We then look at the details in the image, the size and damage. These will all contribute to us deciding whether that shoe has made the marks.”
And, as Andy explained, the speed in which potential evidence can be processed is often crucial to detectives working across the region to bring offenders to justice.
“We can get items here from Scarborough, for example, on the same day as the crime has been committed.
“Time can be quite crucial if you have arrested somebody because there are time limits as to how long suspects can be detained in custody.
“We can have fingerprints identified within a day but it may be the person identified still has property from the crime in their possession.”
But, as with most investigative techniques, fingerprint recovery and analysis remains consistent despite technological breakthroughs in other fields.
“The basis of fingerprint techniques haven’t changed significantly for 40 years, but in the last decade digital photography has updated things.
“Where we have found a huge benefit is with fingerprint databases and the ability to search fingerprints rather than doing it manually.
“The national fingerprint database has seven million people on it and is a fantastic resource to us,” he said.
The most serious crimes have their own dedicated Major Crime Team within the facility.
Ms Senior added: “Where for a burglary or a robbery you may have three or four items to be examined, in a murder case you can have 100s of samples.
“There is a separate team handling these cases and they can prioritise resources accordingly.
“There is also a dedicated handwriting analyst for the team.”
Another area of the vast facility is for more complex investigations.
John O’Hara, senior forensic lab officer, said: “This is an extension of work carried out at scenes of crime. Types of items we can get fingerprints off can be drugs, knives, axes so this room has the space and capacity.
“We use chemical and physical techniques, light sourcing and lasers.
“Items come to us to find marks such as fingerprints which haven’t appeared with traditional methods or have been gathered from unusual surface materials.
“The more unusual items we’ve had are fronts of ATM machines and doors.
“We use superglue, salts, and can dye items during the complex examination process.”
And with West Yorkshire the largest police forensics service outside London they are also breaking the mold as it was the first facility to house an external forensic provider, LGC.
The man responsible for overseeing the service is head of operations John Gilbody.
“It’s a state-of-the-art facility, second only to the services of the Metropolitan police,” he said.
“The service has 200 CSIs in 12 different locations led by six area forensic managers.
“We’ve got everything under one roof, through having LGC here, it’s something that no one else has.”
And in the coming months the region’s service will be the first in the country to process image scans of prints from the scene via a programme on a tablet device.
“Currently CSIs will take films at the scene and when they get back to the office take scans.
“Now the technology is there to have the same programmes as an app on a mobile device to allow fingerprints or shoe prints to be immediately taken from the scene and sent to us for analysis.”
