Application Demo: Dramatically Reduce Crime with Rapid Investigative Leads-Connecticut Forensic Crime Laboratory
Rapid DNA is a powerful tool being used around the world transforming the investigative process providing leads in the initial critical hours. Come see how the Connecticut State Police and their law enforcement partners built their Rapid DNA program. Hear from Cheryl Carreiro, and Sevasti Papakanakis, Assistant Directors, Connecticut Division of Scientific Services, as they share their Rapid DNA operations from evidence processing to reporting, to provide their customers time sensitive information to assist investigations.
You Might Also Like
(upbeat music)
- Good morning and good afternoon everyone.
Welcome to the next session of HIDS 2022.
My name is Matt Gabriel and I'm the leader
of the Rapid DNA Enablement Team at Thermophishers Scientific.
Welcome to this session.
We heard a little bit from Connecticut State Police
in the earlier session.
Both Sevee Popokonakis and Cheryl Carrero
described their program for rapid DNA investigative leads
within the state of Connecticut.
In this next session,
we're gonna be able to see the rapid HID system
live in action as Cheryl and Sevee take us
into the rapid DNA kiosk
at the Connecticut State Police DNA Laboratory.
To give a little bit of background
for those who may not have joined the previous session,
Connecticut Division of Scientific Services
established their statewide rapid DNA program
in the late summer of 2021.
They currently have two systems that are running
and have trained over 160 officers and serve
both 30 state and local police departments
on using the rapid HID system to generate investigative leads
from a range of crime scene samples.
This program has been widely successful over the past year.
And as they approached the year anniversary of this program
or looking to expand the rapid DNA program within the state,
with that being said, let's now join Cheryl and Sevee
as they take us for a tour of the rapid HID ID instrument
in action and learn exactly how it has impacted public safety.
(gentle music)
- Aimchanger for Waterbury Police,
a new piece of technology is helping them identify
potential suspects faster.
Channel three, Waterbury Bureau Chief Dennis Valera
shows us how it works
and how it's already been used to make an arrest.
- The rapid HID technology recently helped
in the arrest of this guy, Juan Roman.
Police found his DNA from an object he was trying
to break into top shelf liquor.
After submitting his DNA into the machine
in less than an hour, he was already identified as a suspect.
After taking him into custody,
he admitted to six other burglaries throughout the city.
- Hi, I'm Cheryl Carrero.
I'm the Assistant Director for the Division
of Scientific Services in the state of Connecticut.
I'm here with Lieutenant Joe Renone
from the Waterbury Police Department
and we are in our rapid DNA kiosk.
Here's the rapid HID instrument that we use here
and it's to generate investigative leads.
If you didn't see me on the previous session,
just for a little recap,
we have this kiosk open 24/7 for officers to come in
and use this, potentially develop a single source profile
from a crime scene sample.
And that crime scene sample profile then searches against
the state of Connecticut's convicted offenders.
And we hope to generate an investigative lead for them
to be able to use in their investigations.
This kiosk that we have here is used for a tool
for officers, local, state, FBI.
They're able to come here and use instruments in this kiosk
and the rapid HID is used quite frequently.
We generate a lot of leads for different agencies
with the oversight of the lab,
but in general, it's for the officers
and they're the operators.
That's who we train.
And Lieutenant here will talk about, for his side,
about his investigations and how this is gonna help them
in the future.
- Hi Joe. - Thank you Cheryl.
The Waterbury Police Department is very excited
to be part of this rapid program
with the Connecticut Division of Scientific Services,
Connecticut Forensic Laboratory.
Already, we've had some success with an investigative lead
that was given to us through a serial burglar,
that burglarized seven downtown businesses.
Within 90 minutes, the rapid system gave the detectives
an investigative lead to provide more of an investigation
with other police work that was used
to pick up the suspect and eventually get a full confession
from the burglarized suspect on the seven burglaries.
This has been really a great system for us
as far as the timeliness of it.
In the past, it would take possibly three months,
possibly a year depending on the crime.
If it was a property crime, it would be over a year.
But now we're looking at 90 minutes
to give us an investigative lead.
The big, big thing is that not only is it a closure
for the police department, but all of us have been victims
of some types of crime, whether it be a burglary
all the way up into a robbery or homicide.
So these victims and these victims' families,
all they want is closure and this type of system
could give them closure.
Besides the police department,
it could give victims' families closure.
So we're very excited to be part of that
and I think the federal, state and local agencies
can eradicate our excite to have the rapid program with us.
- We do deal with agencies that are sort of skeptical.
It's DNA and in some instances,
people are kind of scared of DNA and the science behind it.
But I'm sure Lieutenant Herrick can explain that.
It's really simple to use this instrument
and all agencies are available to use it.
And it's pretty easy, right?
- It is very easy.
We're very fortunate in Waterbury.
We have crime scene technicians that all have degrees
in forensic science, whereas police officers
don't need forensic science degrees.
But when it was described to us and just, you know,
joking around with colleagues,
it's easy enough that a police officer can do it.
It's very easy.
There's no issues at all with it.
And if we had a problem, we would just call Cheryl
or somebody at the state lab to help us out.
So if you're reluctant to get this system,
you know, you shouldn't feel that way.
- So Lieutenant brought over some evidence
and we're going to process it for the rapid.
And I'm gonna take this over to him
because he's suiting up and he's getting aseptic
and he's putting on gloves and sleeves and a mask
because we have to protect against contamination.
And he's gonna talk you through the process.
Here you go, Joe.
- Thank you, Cheryl. - You're welcome.
- Hey, so I'm gonna open up the bag
and we have a bottle here.
This is great because we're gonna take this off,
the bottle cap.
And all the good DNA is gonna be
around that surface area where that person was drinking from.
So we had sterile swabs and some distilled water.
And we're just gonna swab this mouth of that bottle.
(dramatic music)
Okay.
Save one swab for conventional.
Under the swab into the cartridge.
And it's all set to enter into the rapid.
We'll log into the rapid.
So for the rapid hit ID,
there's three different ways you can log into the system.
You can either have a pin like Lieutenant Renona
is doing right now.
They do biometrics by fingerprint
and they also do facial recognition, which is really cool.
So he's logging in, he's gonna type in his agency code,
WTVY, his case number.
And the item number.
After that goes in, the machine accepts it.
Check mark.
So the machine's gonna tell us what to do.
We have the cartridge all prepped, the swabs in there,
and now it's going to tell him to insert the cartridge
into the sample port like so awesome.
It's gonna circle around and in 90 minutes,
hopefully we get a association
to a Connecticut convicted offender.
So Lieutenant, after this is done,
we might get some information
that'll give you an investigative lead.
If we do get an association,
I'm gonna find out the name and date of birth of somebody.
You're gonna make sure that that person
is a convicted felon by state statute.
You're gonna confirm that,
and then I'm gonna type you up a notification,
which will explain what we did.
A little rapid summary, a rapid DNA summary
that you can paste into your police report,
and you can use it as investigative lead.
Now remember, you submitted evidence
to the laboratory for conventional testing.
So please wait for the real codis hit
until you go further with the courts,
but at least this gives you an idea of where to go.
- Great, I think it's a game changer for policing.
Being a police officer for over 30 years,
this is the most exciting thing that I've seen
in the last 30 years.
Besides the patrol units getting baddie cameras
and all that other technology as far as
working in a forensic division
and seeing the amount of resources
that are spent on a major investigation,
this just brings that time down by more than half.
It enables the detectives who are getting surveillance video
and interviewing witnesses.
It allows them to get that investigative lead,
and they could work on other avenues of the investigation.
So we're very honored to have this be part
of this rapid DNA program,
and utilize this in Waterbury Police Department.
We're also gonna be inviting other officers
throughout Connecticut,
whether they be state, federal, or local officers
to come here, and that collaboration
between our department, all the other local,
state, and federal agencies in Connecticut,
and of course, Cheryl, and the people
at the Connecticut Forensic Lab
is going to help us a lot
in law enforcement in Connecticut.
- Absolutely, I mean, I can log in
to any rapid instrument across the state,
and our future is going to be more
of those rapid-hit ID systems across the state
in the east, in the west,
and officers can go to all different places,
and Sevi and I are allowed to go in
and check the data, make sure that everything's okay,
and be able to help them get that investigative lead.
So it's very exciting.
- One question we get a lot from families,
especially in serious cases,
where the victims can't communicate with police,
is that please find this person.
Please help our family,
please bring this person to justice.
So this technology, this rapid program,
is going to help us and investigators in that,
and we're gonna bring that person to justice
a lot quicker than we would have
with conventional DNA methods.
Like I said before, it used to take months and years,
even a serious case would take a couple months,
and this is gonna give not only us closure
through our investigation, but also the families,
that closure that they want.
- So hopefully, after watching all this,
you've seen how easy the rapid-hit instrument is.
It's used by our law enforcement agencies all the time,
and it's put into this kiosk,
especially because we have other tools at this laboratory
that the officers can use.
We have a NIVID instrument,
an AFIS instrument, and now the rapid-hit ID instrument.
It's been a great collaboration with agencies.
If you have any questions whatsoever about our program
or anything that Sevi and I can help you with,
please contact us.
Thank you very much for taking the time to watch this.
(upbeat music)
- Cheryl and Sevi, good morning.
Welcome to HIDS 2022.
How are you guys?
- Good morning, Matt.
- Good morning.
- It's been a while since we've chatted
how everything's going.
- Well, just going through.
- How you in there?
- Great.
So I was really impressed by the video,
the tour and the rapid DNA unit that we just showed.
I'm sure the attendees are super excited to hear more
about how you started the program,
the effort that you put in,
and then ultimately the successes that you've seen
in such a short period of time.
I mean, when I think back of the work that we did together
to stand this program up,
you're coming up on a year anniversary
and already the successes to the impact on public safety
have been really quite astounding.
So I just want to say, you know, on a personal note,
congratulations on all the effort that you guys have put forth
to make this successful.
- Thank you.
Thanks, Matt.
There was a lot of leg work in that one.
- I'm sure it was.
And I know, you know, some of the challenges
that you both had and some of the obstacles
that you had to overcome.
So thinking back when you were originally
kind of conceptualizing rapid DNA for the state of Connecticut,
you know, when was that inflection point
when you thought to yourselves,
hey, this is really going to work.
We have something here.
Was there kind of that aha moment
or that, you know, the light bulb going off
where you said we can do this and it's going to be successful?
- I would probably say after the validation,
and definitely seeing the whole process
from A to Z and how small ponds connected with everything.
And that's when I think Cheryl and I were like,
okay, I think we can do this.
And, you know, I said in the last session,
our director of the laboratory, Dr. Guy Valaro,
had this concept in his head since 2013,
a way to, you know, speed up the turnaround time.
And so when this came out, he was in total support
and wanted this to go through for the state of Connecticut.
And, you know, working together,
we accomplished a lot in a short period of time.
- Absolutely.
You know, and that's a really good point.
You know, as forensic scientists,
I think we lose sleep over case backlogs,
you know, long turnaround time.
So for you and Dr. Valaro collectively,
to have that vision that, you know,
we need to speed things up.
We need to bring investigative leads to law enforcement
in a more efficient, speedy manner, you know,
to have that vision and then be able to execute that vision.
That's, you know, the effort and sustained effort, I think,
is really impressive.
So again, congratulations and a job well done.
- Thank you.
- Can you share a little bit about,
now that you're approaching kind of the year anniversary
of your program, how do you, what are your future plans?
Do you see expanding the program
to different types of primes or sample number?
You're obviously reaching, you know,
police departments across the state of Connecticut,
but how do you see that future expansion?
- Well, we want, we already have in place,
coming up in the future, you know,
another two more rapid systems coming.
One's gonna be fitted in a mobile van,
like I said in the last session.
The other one's going to another part of the state.
And there's other agencies that are very, very interested
in getting rapid instruments in their agencies.
So I do see it spreading across the state.
As far as expanding to cases,
right now, you know, we're trying to do just violent crimes
to a person unless like,
there's a blood at point of entry for something,
'cause we know body fluids work,
excellently.
Seven, do you have anything to add?
- I mean, we are trying to spread out
and expand on the case types.
I hopefully we can get to a point where it is used
a little more regularly on those property crimes as well.
- Yeah, I'm glad you brought up the property crimes,
'cause I've been talking with a number of your colleagues
in peers about implementing rapid programs.
And it seems to be some consensus that, you know,
for state labs who have large volume of requests,
the property crimes are the ones
that they feel more comfortable pushing
to the rapid DNA workflow.
And then incrementally growing it, right?
Show that the proof of concept works,
solve some cases and then expand from there.
So in your traditional workflow,
do you have a balance between say,
property crimes, testing versus violent crimes?
Do you have any specific sample or case accessioning guidelines
where maybe you focus more on one crime type versus another?
- Oh, through the traditional testing, absolutely.
Yes, we accept more samples for a violent crime
than we would for a property crime.
We really do focus more on those serious cases.
But I think for rapid, they're all equally viable.
I mean, the property crimes are a little more challenging
'cause they are more touch samples.
And we know historically and from experience
that those are not very conducive to the rapid
'cause they produce those mixtures,
but hopefully we do get to the point in the future
that we can work on those.
- Great.
- Yeah, go ahead, ma'am.
- No, go for it.
- I just gonna say the system is a great triage.
You know, when evidence receiving gets a property crime
and they bring in six pieces of evidence, you know,
we have a limit.
If they run it on rapid and, you know,
we get four of them to have no profile whatsoever
and two of them have a mixture,
we know what to do those two.
And so it helps us not have to sort through the six,
you know, pieces of evidence
and we have two to run for our conventional testing.
- That's a great point.
I mean, it shifts the resources a little bit, right?
- Yeah, very much.
- You're able to focus in on those that are most probative
or that you feel the most confident
you're gonna get a result off of that upfront rapid DNA
testing.
So thank you for that.
Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the sample
types that you were surprised that you got a result
that maybe at the front end you were thinking,
oh, this won't give us a reasonable result.
That would give us an investigative lead.
- Go ahead, time.
- Yeah, just like I mentioned before
that those touch samples are the most challenging.
Those are the ones that have surprised us the most.
There have been times where Cheryl and I have, you know,
coordinated with the police agencies
and we've said, you know, this might not be a great sample.
It's not traditionally what we'll do on rapid,
but okay, let's try it and lo and behold,
we get a full profile and we, you know,
- Or a touch.
- Or a touch.
- Awesome, that's great.
And then your collection methods,
you're doing a swab, b swab, one goes to rapid
and then one stored for traditional if needed.
- Yeah, that's what they train.
It's really up to them.
They are the users of the system.
It's all in their custody, the police officers,
you know, they do the whole process.
So if their agency normally collects two swabs
and sends it for conventional testing, they'll add a third.
Or if they normally, you know, it's a blood,
they send one, they'll send two.
And they either call it like dash one, dash two,
A, B, you know, it's up to them.
- Awesome.
- We do reiterate though that it needs to be confirmed
on the lads end.
- Absolutely, yeah.
- Yeah, no, I think that's really--
- This is just a screening test.
This is not something that is like a code is hit
that we get through conventional testing.
- Yeah, in your video in the earlier session,
you know, you touched, you both touched on the point
that when you were thinking about rolling this program out,
you really had to have kind of a change of a mindset, right?
You know, traditionally we think of DNA for identification,
that identification can withstand challenges in court.
This is a little bit of a different application now.
You're more on the front end,
you're looking for an investigative lead.
And when you think of other investigative leads,
you know, they're numerous, right?
You can have a partial fingerprint,
you could have, you know, a partial license plate,
you can have an eyewitness account.
So now we're taking DNA evidence
and we're moving it to that forefront of the investigation.
When you went through that process,
did you have to kind of have those conversations,
those conceptual kind of conversations within the lab
to get people to change their mindsets
or shift their thinking a little bit?
How did that look?
- Yeah, we go ahead, Cheryl.
- No, no, go ahead.
- No, I was gonna say we definitely felt that shift
in the process of the validation
and in the process of bringing things online
and just trying to change our mindset of,
is this okay, is it not okay
and really thinking outside the box for the idea?
- Yeah, you know, especially with the database,
it's a copy of our state offenders, it's not CODIS.
And we make that very, very clear
in all of the notifications that we send and all that.
So, you know, we did all this extra SOPs, policies,
documents to make, you know, us feel better as scientists
that we're following the rules.
- That's great.
And to date, do you have any metrics on profiles generated,
number investigations aided?
- Sure.
So I've trained over 215 officers in the state of Connecticut.
We have about 175 profiles, unknown profiles.
And I think about 30 to 35 investigative leads from that.
I mean, it's pretty good.
And we even started in July of 2021.
- It's phenomenal.
I mean, and you're seeing it already, right?
The success that you've generated over this first nine months
is probably growing the expectation,
growing the energy around the program.
What do you see from the police officers?
What kind of feedback have you been getting?
- They're very excited.
I mean, word of mouth, a police officer will come,
get an investigative lead,
and then go tell friends and other agencies,
and then I get emails and my director gets calls and,
hey, what's the rapid DNA program?
And we made a flyer for them to see what it is.
A lot of high energy, they love it,
because they want to solve their cases,
and they want to get these investigative leads
to lead them to who may have potentially committed the crime.
- That's fantastic.
I mean, I know myself, I personally got excited
when I heard about the first case
that you all solved with that assault on the police officer.
And for me, working within the company
and then supporting you guys through your effort,
that was really a good day for me
and for rapid DNA to see the mission in action, right?
And you have that vision, you conceptualize,
you did all the legwork,
you had that consistent effort and energy,
and that came to fruition.
So again, congratulations there.
If I can maybe shift just a little bit,
for your colleagues and peers who are starting to think
about how they might adopt rapid DNA,
do you have any advice or some words of wisdom
on how they should go about it
to build a similar program as yours?
What would you say now looking back
on the effort that you put forth?
- So I know a lot of our success comes from the support
that we had, A from our director and management as a whole,
and then also the collaboration that we instilled
with the other police departments, our state's attorneys.
I think you need to have everybody on board
and everybody on the same page
before you move in any direction.
- Right.
- Yeah, I totally agree.
I mean that collaboration, getting the buy in, right?
You have your larger criminal justice stakeholders
who you're serving not only police department,
but the DA's office and the courts
and have that leadership to support you through this.
I'm sure that was really helpful and beneficial.
- Absolutely.
- A few questions came in the chat that I wanted to ask
just to make sure I cover those.
There was a question around your turnaround time
for conventional testing versus rapid.
Obviously you're generating profile in 90 minutes with rapid.
What is your standard turnaround time for cases
that come into the laboratory today?
- We are around the 60 days for DNA.
And if you get a request that's a quote unquote,
rush or expedited request,
do you have the ability to pull an analyst
to work in a new individual case
and get that done in a day or two days?
Do you have that sort of submission?
- We do, but it is very disruptive.
And of course, it's no comparison to the rapid.
- Absolutely.
Yeah, and I think that's another benefit of rapid
is now that you don't have to kind of disrupt
your normal course of business.
You can keep your analysts focused on,
note those other crime cases that come in
and then push some of those to the investigative side.
- Yeah.
- So the kiosk I visited with you guys
now, I don't know if I'll have last year to see your kiosk.
When you think of expanding the programs out
and having the instrument in the mobile unit,
will you also pull in other local police departments
like you did with Waterbury PD
and have a similar kiosk set up?
- I think every rapid instrument that goes out in the state
will be, and the laboratory will have an oversight.
In order to get data, to get the investigative lead,
they need us.
It's not like a free-for-all,
you can go in and see who they're hit the matches to.
So they need us.
So yes, we're going to oversee the entire program
for the state.
- Yeah.
And from a kind of a physical plant perspective,
seeing the kiosk, you have the niven instrument
next to the rapid hit ID,
and then you have the APHIS terminal,
you really don't meet a large facility to set this up.
I mean, you simply meet a single room
and a small fridge to accommodate it.
Yeah.
Excellent.
We have a few, another minute or so,
I can ask another question or two.
Do you, going back to partnerships,
how has the DA's office been to support this?
Have, you know, in the early successes,
have they, you know, really taken to the program
and been excited about it,
just as much as the police department?
- Yeah.
They were very supportive.
They helped me write up some of the policies
because I'm not an illegal expert.
So there are some things that we had to put in documents
based on state statutes.
They were very excited about it.
They thought it was a great idea.
- Awesome.
And Sebi, have any of these cases gone to court yet,
or is it still too?
- Not yet.
Very early on.
- Yeah.
- And, but they will go to court
and have the confirmation of the conventional testing.
So, you know, this is an investigative lead.
This is a police officer going out to the scene,
doing a KM test and getting a result,
and then the lab confirms it.
That's what Rapid DNA is.
So not only will they get maybe a result
in an association from Rapid,
they will also get a confirmation from the lab
and get that real true report that is under accreditation.
- Yeah.
I mean, it's science, right?
So to have that reproducibility,
be able to go into court.
Now, knowing you ran the sample on two different platforms
and got the exact same result,
that's a further, you know, kind of confirmation
that the DNA process is whole, it's working,
it's reproducible and can be relied upon,
which I think, you know, society in general,
the DA's office, that's very critical.
- And it's been proof of concept
because I've ever hit that we, you know,
have it the lab and if a Rapid was run,
it's the same, same result.
- Same result.
- Awesome.
Well, guys, again, super impressed by your program.
I'm sure your colleagues and peers
will be reaching out to you to find out
more about your program.
- Absolutely.
- Thank you for highlighting the work and best of luck.
If you ever need to reach out to me,
you know how to get me.
- Oh, yes we do. (laughs)
- All right, take care, best of luck.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
- Bye. - Thank you.
- Thank you.
(silence)
[ Silence ]