"DC abruptly disbands crime lab’s firearms unit"

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DC abruptly disbands crime lab’s firearms unit
The city issued a reduction-in-force for all 11 remaining members of the D.C. Department of Forensic Sciences’ firearms unit. They were officially informed of the move Wednesday, instructed to clear out their desks and walked out of the building.
A reduction-in-force means the agency is abolishing positions rather than laying off particular staff members, and it usually means the agency has no plans for refilling them. Such reductions are not related to an employee’s job performance.

DFS did not provide a reason for the move to the 11 affected employees. However, lack of work and an agency reorganization or realignment are both reasons a reduction in force can be issued, according to the District Personnel Manual.
If earlier stories about this unit are to be believed, this was an agency of hacks.

Re: "DC abruptly disbands crime lab’s firearms unit"

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Reading through the articles, looks like internal politics. The OAG and USA were not objective authorities to review DFS but ultimately they got their way.
“By statute, Department of Forensic Sciences must remain independent from the prosecution and defense,” Smith said. “Forensic testing complaints are required to be reviewed by the independent Science Advisory Board (SAB), and audits are required to be performed by a third-party national accrediting body (ANAB). The review conducted by the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) does not meet this criteria and cannot be considered an audit of the department. The SAB has requested the materials reviewed by the USAO and OAG for this report and these materials have yet to be made available.”

Smith told WTOP in an interview last fall — and, more recently, during a Scientific Advisory Board meeting in January — that ANAB (the American National Standards Institute’s National Accreditation Board) inspected the firearms unit last summer and also investigated prosecutors’ claims. In the end, the accrediting body gave the lab a clean bill of health, re-accrediting the lab and closing all complaints raised by prosecutors.

Pamela Sale, vice president of forensics for ANAB, told the Scientific Advisory Board during the January meeting that, as part of its reviews of the lab, two of the group’s auditors had reviewed the DFS case notes for the “inconclusive” finding and found that the case notes supported that conclusion. She also said, however, that ANAB auditors had reviewed the case notes of the prosecution’s outside experts and found that those notes supported their conclusion that the casings were not fired in the same gun.
https://wtop.com/dc/2021/03/first-on-wt ... arms-case/
"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." - Daniel Patrick Moynihan

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