Criminals beware: Ocean County sheriff first in NJ to use high-tech crime scene scanner

TOMS RIVER - It’s going to be a lot harder to get away with crime in Ocean County, after the Sheriff’s Department has become the first law enforcement agency in New Jersey to purchase a digital camera that can quickly scan beyond the naked eye for evidence not even the bad guys will know they’ve left behind.

The Crime-lite AUTO scanner from the British-headquartered police tech company Foster + Freeman looks like something from science fiction and sounds like it too, with its advertised “high-intensity multi-spectral illumination.”

The device provides a view of the full ultraviolet spectrum, as well as near-infrared. What this means for the 13 investigators who work in the department’s Crime Scene Investigations (CSI) Division is that they can use the camera to pan over any location to detect fingerprints, gunshot residue, broken glass, natural or manmade fibers, hair follicles, in addition to trace amounts of dried blood, saliva, semen and urine — and other things. Think of it as being similar to a kind of primitive tricorder from "Star Trek."

Since the county government purchased the camera about three weeks ago, the evidence it has uncovered is already being used in the prosecution of a recent assault in a domestic abuse case, said Sheriff Michael G. Mastronardy.

The neck of a female victim was scanned shortly after the reported incident. The handprints of a male suspect identified in the attempted strangulation were found around the victim’s throat, before any bruising was visible to the human eye.

“We’re the first in the state, the closest other machine like this is in Maryland,” said sheriff’s Capt. Craig Johnson, who commands the CSI division in Ocean County.

The camera is a successor tool to a piece of equipment called the DCS 5. This older model involves the kind of traditional methods of forensic investigations that much of the public may be familiar with from contemporary television shows set around homicide detectives and their mysteries.

For the CSI division, Johnson said the upgrade produced the same sense of awe for him as going from a flip phone to a smartphone (a smartphone that albeit costs about $30,000).

Before the Crime-lite AUTO scanner, multi-colored flashlight lenses had to be shined at just the correct angle onto broad surface areas treated with luminol and amido black. The chemicals are sprayed over entire crime scenes because they illuminate blood stains and their subsequent splatter — which over time fade from outside the range of human vision.

Johnson described the old process as cumbersome, labor-intensive and time-consuming. Moreover, the chemicals can leave behind a substantial mess for the owners or occupants of a home who may already be coping with perhaps the greatest personal tragedy of their lives.

From a practical standpoint, the old process took hours upon hours, said Sgt. John Bourke, a CSI investigator and senior sheriff’s officer.

“It’s almost like looking for a needle in a haystack,” Bourke said. “We would’ve had to do an entire room. Maybe the whole floor. … We got to come in and use chemicals to try to develop whatever evidence is there. So, instead of very caustic, expensive chemicals coming in — exposing officers, plus the residents with everything else that’s going on — we can use this on scene to pinpoint or search prior to processing certain areas. … So we don’t have to process the entire room.”

The new camera-scanner now replaces most of that work with the digital technology, with any such physical evidence found still being physically sampled once the scanner determines where it is.

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“So say, if there was blood or semen, or some other type of protein that would react (to the chemicals), we can now see that with the ultraviolet light, right away (from the camera),” Johnson said. “So if there was a fingerprint of blood, we would have to treat one small section rather than the whole wall.”

The acquisition of a Crime-Lite AUTO scanner is part of Mastronardy’s ongoing commitment to beef up both the patrol and investigative arms of the Sheriff’s Office.

The sheriff has increased the number of investigators on duty per shift from two to three, and added normal weekend shifts. Before Mastronardy, detectives would be called out on overtime on weekends — which is when most major crimes tended to happen, particularly during the summer months in Ocean County, Johnson observed.

In December, Mastronardy lobbied the county Board of Commissioners for more than a $10,000 raise for Matthew R. Wood, the CSI’s forensic chemist, who was about to be recruited by the New Jersey State Police. The sheriff made the case to the board that Wood was far too valuable and good at his job for the county to lose.

The commission agreed. Mastronardy then made a counteroffer for $139,550 and persuaded Wood to stay. The sheriff has previously argued that his officers, 911 operators and other professional staffers are underpaid when their compensation is compared to the salaries and wages of other local law enforcement officials in Ocean County.

Erik Larsen: 732-682-9359 or elarsen@gannettnj.com

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Ocean County sheriff first in NJ with high-tech crime scene scanner