Take a trip inside the Waynesville Police evidence processing room
May 15—While rare for a small town police department of its size, the Waynesville Police Department has leveled up its crime solving capabilities with its own in-house crime lab.
The crime processing room does not look like something out of your favorite episode of CSI. The room is tucked away on the lower floor of the police building, just down the hallway from the criminal investigation division.
To be admissible in court, evidence eventually has to go to the state crime lab in Raleigh or the Western Regional Crime Lab in Edneyville. But Waynesville Police are able to do their own examination of the evidence first.
"We do minor processing before we send it to the official lab. It saves time for us," Lt. Tamara Vander Day explained.
This allows officers to develop leads ahead of time instead of having to wait months or even years on results. It also allows them to protect some evidence, like fingerprints, by pulling prints and transmitting the images electronically — instead of sending in the actual item that the prints are on, which risks damage to the evidence.
The in-house print processing also allows officers to look at prints ahead of time to determine if there is enough there for the state lab to analyze.
"If we pull a print and blow it up and look at it and there aren't sufficient quantity of minutiae for identification, then we know the lab isn't going to come up with anything," Vander Day said. "What's the point of sending a pencil if you don't know if anything is on it?"
This presents another major advantage on time, as it keeps from having their flow of evidence to the state lab from getting bogged down.
"They say they will only accept five items of a certain type at a time for analysis," Vander Day said. "Usually they'll only actually accept one or two. After three of four months, they'll say 'okay we're ready for you to send us more.' A year-and-a-half will pass when we could do it all ourself and see if there is anything identifiable."
They also have technology to check potential counterfeit bills.
The lab features numerous pieces of equipment and enough chemicals to fill the cabinets that line the walls.
"We have an alternate light source kit that we can use to look for fibers or different bodily fluids," Vander Day said. "We can see if there is anything on an item and see if it is worth sending (to the state crime lab). We can reduce it down so we aren't sending them garbage."
Among the equipment is a hood for containing air flow. Vander Day said it is used during certain types of print pulling. It is also used when fentanyl is being packed into evidence. The airflow helps protect the officers from inhaling the fentanyl.
They also have a super glue fuming machine for finding fingerprints on non-porous surfaces. The finger print equipment includes a machine to compare two different prints — the prints lifted from a scene versus prints from suspect — as well as a station to photograph prints.
The chemicals on hand do just about anything you can think of. There are chemicals to spray on sand to keep the soil from moving if a print needs to be taken. There's a similar solution for snow to keep it from melting or for wet surfaces, like the outside of a car.
The lab also has a fluorescent chemical used to find some prints. Once applied, a filter and ultraviolet light will reveal any prints.
