New Bedford detectives training on crime scene evidence after Plymouth County cooperation ends

Dozens of area police officers, including two from New Bedford, are undergoing forensics training this week in response to service cuts by the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office.

For the past few years, police departments in Bristol County sometimes called in forensic experts from Plymouth to assist with crime scene investigations. Local police gather some evidence, but specially trained officers from the Plymouth Sheriff’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation routinely provided a hand, be it analyzing evidence from a stolen vehicle or shooting. 

But in February, the Plymouth sheriff terminated services for Bristol County, citing budgetary constraints. The move came after Massachusetts sheriffs were audited by the state inspector for overspending. 

Now, with assistance from the Bristol County District Attorney’s Office, municipal police departments, including New Bedford, Dartmouth, Fall River, Westport and Fairhaven, are purchasing equipment, training officers and trying to fill this new gap.

New Bedford expanding its forensics work

The New Bedford Police Department started using Plymouth BCI in 2023. The department was down dozens of officers and chose to prioritize patrol staffing and emergency calls over specialized units that required more funding and training, according to spokesperson Holly Huntoon. (For years, NBPD has not filled its budgeted positions; as of this year, dozens of positions still remain unfilled.) 

“It made sense for us to use those resources rather than dedicate already-limited staffing to create a separate in-house unit,” Huntoon wrote in an email.  

New Bedford police officers were collecting evidence from crime scenes before and while Plymouth BCI’s services were available. Additionally, the Massachusetts State Police have always assisted with deaths and homicides, which they have jurisdiction over, and other serious crimes if requested. 

(The State Police operate a 24/7 Crime Scene Services division that documents and collects evidence from homicides, armed robberies, sexual assaults, suspicious deaths, motor vehicle accidents, and breaking and entering events.) 

But Plymouth BCI assisted with other serious crimes and provided testing that was sometimes faster than that provided by the state crime labs, local police say.

Last year, Plymouth BCI responded to 181 calls in Bristol County, 50 of which were in New Bedford, per Plymouth County Sheriff spokesperson Karen Barry. The two most frequent calls in the city were for shootings and recovered stolen vehicles.

Plymouth BCI’s “Road ID officers” are trained in the gathering, analyzing, identification and preparation of physical evidence. They supervise and assist at accident and crime scenes, dust for prints, retrieve DNA and take crime scene photographs.

They prepare hair and blood samples for off-site testing, but process and analyze fingerprints and other evidence in-house. They also routinely testify in court about the evidence they gathered. 

Lorenzo Gonzalez, NBPD union president and a former detective, said Plymouth BCI was very helpful and responded to shootings and stabbings. Its analysts would collect, process and categorize the evidence before it went into New Bedford’s chain of custody, he said.

But NBPD says crime scenes were sometimes held for “extended periods of time” while officers waited for Plymouth staff to arrive. An in-house team can reduce the wait, Police Chief Jason Thody said.

The Police Department in March sent six detectives for a four-day training in Connecticut at a cost of about $500 per person. Thody said it was planned before they learned Plymouth was terminating its services, but that the department added three officers to the initial three after finding out.

The department has ordered cameras, tripods, blood identification tests, fingerprinting kits, Faraday bags to secure phones, and other supplies to collect DNA. The $6,300 cost is being covered by the DA’s office, per Huntoon.

According to the department, “many recovered stolen vehicles and burglary cases” were not “processed to the fullest extent for forensic evidence prior to this new training and equipment.” 

“Any evidence at scenes that could be collected and sent to the laboratory was preserved, but on-scene processing of these types of crimes was not routinely conducted by the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office or the Massachusetts State Police,” Huntoon wrote. “This expanded capacity will increase solvability factors, improve the department’s ability to identify offenders, and provide the most comprehensive cases possible to prosecutors.”

Thody suggested that a trained staff with solid evidence-gathering methods will result in stronger cases for the prosecutor’s office. 

“[Officers] should be able to testify,” Thody said, citing the Karen Read trial as an example. (Amid the many issues that plagued the case, Canton police officers used red plastic Solo cups to collect blood from the scene, which notably didn’t hold up in court.) 

“We had a responsibility to be more proactive and be better at that,” he said.

Dartmouth, Westport also adjusting

A key benefit of working with Plymouth BCI was faster processing time, said Dartmouth police Detective Lt. Keith DaCosta. Dartmouth police had used BCI here and there, and were planning to use it on a regular basis.

Dartmouth police have at least three officers trained in crime scene processing, and each has a kit for gathering DNA evidence, DaCosta said. A regular patrol officer can still collect a shirt or weapon left at the scene of a breaking and entering, for example, but if a suspect also left behind blood, that would be reserved for the town’s trained crime-scene officers. 

Nationally, state and local crime labs are facing steep backlogs for forensic processing. Stateline, a news website, reported last year that delays in testing are stalling prosecutions, and that possible federal funding cuts may worsen the delays. 

The state crime lab will consult with the investigating agency and prosecutor’s office to prioritize evidence for analysis, except for sexual assault evidence kits, which are processed sooner, according to an MSP spokesperson.  

“BCI is a regional asset that saves cities and towns money on training, equipment, and time,” said Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph McDonald in an emailed statement. “The men and women who work in the unit have specialized training, which results in more crimes being solved and victims receiving the justice they expect and deserve.”

Westport police Lt. Bryan McCarthy said that in one Westport case, it took about three years for DNA test results to come back from a state crime lab. 

He said Westport police’s agreement with Plymouth BCI was also fairly new, but that the agency used the county’s services for a string of home and vehicle break-ins. Otherwise, the department was mostly dropping off fingerprints with BCI for processing.

The expertise of BCI investigators was also seen as a real benefit. McCarthy said he’d rather have a BCI officer, who lifts fingerprints routinely, pull a print from a scene in Westport than a local detective who might have lifted only one or two prints that year. 

“BCI does it all day, every day,” he said. 

The state inspector’s final report on sheriffs concluded that Plymouth BCI (in addition to a BCI operated by the Barnstable sheriff’s office) takes cases that the State Police either cannot or will not take due to resource constraints or the type of case. 

Many smaller police departments “are not able to maintain the staff with specialized skills to handle the technical aspects of crime scene or criminal investigations. If BCI were to stop providing the services, “needs would go unmet or MSP and local police departments would require additional resources.”

The Boston Globe reported in March that Sheriff McDonald’s office sent layoff notices to all employees within Plymouth BCI. 

Police chiefs in Plymouth County then took to social media to issue calls for action from state legislators, arguing cuts to or the closure of Plymouth BCI will have “profound” impacts on law enforcement and “potentially compromise investigative outcomes.” 

Ultimately, there were only partial layoffs. The bureau, which still serves Plymouth County police departments, is currently staffed with 10 Road ID officers, three lab analysts, and one administrative position, said Barry. That’s down from 27 full-time employees.

Training this week

More than 30 police officers from 15 cities and towns, including two with NBPD, are attending a three-day forensic investigation training this week in Taunton, funded by the DA’s office.

The course covers several areas, including photography, fingerprinting methods, bloodstain testing, and scanning scenes for human remains.

The training comes after some local police chiefs met with Bristol County District Attorney Tom Quinn III about the issue in May, according to Thody. 

“We are aware of this issue and are in communication with the local police departments,” said DA spokesperson Jennifer Sowa in an email in late May. “The District Attorney has committed funding for training and to purchase some crime scene processing equipment.”

MSP has also been engaging with the impacted cities and towns, per an agency spokesperson. In the last three months, MSP has responded to eight crime scenes in southeastern Massachusetts for less serious cases (no fatality, gunshot or stabbing), which it doesn’t usually cover.

In March, MSP assisted NBPD twice by processing vehicles tied to non-fatal shootings.

Huntoon in an email said NBPD is “actively working through” ideas with the DA’s office to ensure the department’s evidence processing and collection are sufficient for prosecutions. 

“We are also working with the other Bristol County Police Departments to explore a regional approach to crime scene processing,” Huntoon wrote. “Smaller departments have fewer personnel and may not be able to provide consistent coverage.”

Gonzalez echoed this, saying New Bedford detectives could assist smaller departments in the area. It might not be at the scale of Plymouth BCI, he said, but it could help move toward a new regional response system.

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