Suetaz

Drug evidence piling up at state forensic labs

Daily Press Virginia | October 9, 2004

NORFOLK, Va. -- A statewide surge in drug arrests and staffing shortages in Virginia's four forensic laboratories have created a massive evidence backlog and have caused some felony drug cases to be dropped, police and prosecutors say.

Scientific analysis of drug evidence that normally would be completed in 10 days was taking an average of 82 days at the end of August, Paul B. Ferrara, director of the state's Division of Forensic Science, told The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk.

The backlog has stalled cases in general district courts, where informal state guidelines set a goal of decisions on most matters within 60 days of an arrest.

Last year, about 42,900 cases were referred to the labs, Ferrara said. By this year's end, he expects a total of 47,140.

Ferrara attributes the increase to the success of drug task forces and to the emergence of new "designer" drugs.

While the number of cases has grown, the staff of drug chemists has shrunk to 33, with five vacant positions, he said.

Earlier this year, Ferrara used a federal grant to pay for eight weeks of mandatory overtime for the chemists, in an attempt to whittle the backlog. He also has attempted to have evidence analyzed based on hearing dates. Both efforts have had only mild success.

Usually about 2,000 cases are pending at any given time. Now, there are more than 11,000.

"Our backlog right now has never been this high. Ever," Ferrara said. "There's limitations to what you can do in order to expedite drug analysis. We've done everything."

In a letter to the Virginia Supreme Court, Ferrara suggested that police and prosecutors try alternatives. One option is for police officers to use approved field kits to test drug evidence. That information is acceptable for preliminary hearings, but not for trials.

Field kits have worked in Norfolk and Virginia Beach, prosecutors say, and Chesapeake has recently started using them temporarily.

"It's kind of a waste of manpower, but it is kind of necessary under the circumstances," Randall D. Smith, Chesapeake's commonwealth's attorney, told the newspaper.

In Portsmouth, late drug reports have caused charges in at least one out of every five felony drug cases to be dropped, General District Judge Morton V. Whitlow said.

Portsmouth Commonwealth's Attorney Earle C. Mobley said he plans to subpoena the chemist if a drug report is not available on the trial date.

"We're not going to lose cases because they can't get their work done," Mobley said.

Ferrara said that five more chemists are in training, but they won't be handling cases for another year. He is looking into reasons the other chemists left, but he doesn't believe that salaries are an issue.

Drug chemists make between $40,799 and $73,000. The lab system employs about 300 full-time and part-time workers overall, on a budget of about $23 million.

There are also backlogs in analysis for DNA and firearms evidence.

Ferrara said he hopes the situation will be under control by this time next year.

"It took us some time to get into this mess," Ferrara said. "It's going to take us some time to get out of it."

[Suetaznote: The war on drugs is a huge mess that is taking far too long to get out of. End the war on drugs and they won't have any backlog to complain about and this $23 million dollars of taxpayer money won't be wasted.

We've read many opinions on the war on drugs. Below is another view that I thought was interesting.]

Supremacy, Taboos, and the Drug War

By Robert Rapplean | Drug Sense Weekly | Oct. 9, 2004

If you ask most people the difference between superiority and supremacy, their first instinct is to rely on the technical meaning of the words, or refer to the dictionary. In order to truly understand what we mean when we use a word it is far more useful to refer to a tool such as Google, which pulls up a sampling of English usage as opposed to a standardized definition. Take a moment to try that out with the words Superiority and Supremacy.

What we find is that superiority is the direct reflection of our genetic need for competition. We compete in every imaginable way in our society - work and play, physical, mental and emotional, creative and logical. To the winners of these competitions go the best jobs, food, mating partners - with nearly anything that possesses varying levels of quality, the highest quality will be distributed to those who are superior by some rating scale. In order to facilitate this, we specifically divide the world into "US" and "THEY" and then spend a lot of time figuring out how U.S. are better than THEY, and thus more deserving of the finest things in life. This comprises the roots of an entire genre of -ism's: racism, creedism, classism etc.

Supremacy takes this concept to its ultimate conclusion. Supremacy is when you believe that you are so far superior to THEY (Jews, blacks, infidels, whatever) that you have the god-given right--or perhaps duty--to persecute, imprison, or even kill all members of the THEY sect, without having to demonstrate harm, and without incurring repercussions. When you type Supremacist into Google, you primarily receive links to Nazi and white supremacist (pro and con) literature.

In its own way, the pursuit of supremacy is responsible for most of the evils that beset mankind. Even the word "evil" reflects this, being traced back to (proto-indo-european) "upelo-", which translates to "uppity, overreaching bounds". Money isn't the root of all evil - it's the pursuit of superiority. Money is just a commonly accepted scoring system.

If you translate "US" as those who don't use or abuse drugs and "THEY" as those who do, then a lot of the motivation behind the drug war starts to make sense. Having laws in place only serve to validate US's belief in their supremacy over THEY. This validation leads to more extreme levels of persecution of THEY, and less thinking about the real details of the conflict.

One of the most telling clues to this may be found in the laws themselves, which are designed to persecute, not to correct. We don't want THEM to become US, because then we'd have nobody to be superior over. The proponents of this system continue to push for harsher laws despite all evidence disproving of allegations of harm.

Eventually this snowballs into our current situation, where even speaking out about the issue labels you as one of THEM, and nobody can admit that it's wrong, because that would be giving up one's superiority and accepting guilt and culpability in addition to persecution.

It is unfortunate that the word supremacist has become a derogatory term. It's frequently tossed around, and many people don't even understand what they mean when they say it. Sadly, supremacy is a very common ailment in the world today. Not being able to use the word is like not being able to use "malnourished" or "infected" - it only allows the problem to worsen.

It is about time that this word was invoked regarding the war on drugs. Not in the sense of name calling, but in the sense of identifying a problem. Not yelled in anger, but stated in context with a full explanation to back it up. Not to create arguments but to create understanding. Not to start something, but to end it.

Robert Rapplean is a political analyst and activist, and is director for Parents and Educators for the Reform of Drug Laws - http://www.perdl.com/ He lives in Denver, CO with his wife and two daughters.

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