A parcel of land, a floor plan, a cost and a contractor have already been earmarked for the construction of the new Forensic Science Centre in St Joseph.
This was revealed yesterday by Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, who said the facility will cost taxpayers TT$204 million.
During a media conference at the current St James location of the FSC, Hinds said Government had taken the decision to provide a brand new and improved space for the very important element of national security.
“Seven times bigger than this one and it will be outfitted with the most modern of technologies,” Hinds revealed.
Construction will be done by a company from the People’s Republic of China and Hinds expects their arrival within the next three weeks.
“We will sign the MOU…when we do that, a contractor will be identified and the work will start and we expect that that work will take place over an 18-month period,” he said.
But the Minister is not waiting for the new building to purchase equipment.
Hinds said in the last two years, with the help of the Acting Director of the Centre, Derrick Sankar, they changed procedures, procured equipment and trained or upskilled staff.
Sankar revealed that prior to last September, the DNA testing machine they had was out of service for two years and they had to send some samples abroad for testing. However, this changed when they got a brand-new machine.
“In September 2021, we started to recommence DNA operations, where we did up to 260 and more DNA profiles,” Sankar said.
He said these cases were crucial to the TTPS Homicide department but they also gave many families closure.
Explaining the importance of the machine, he said without the technology, they could not identify bodies burnt beyond recognition in fires. However, with the new machine, Sankar revealed that they took swabs from some families and extra DNA from the bones to get a possible match and were successful in identifying 23 unidentified bodies.
The Acting Director added that DNA testing can help also with the recent spate of home invasions, especially if no fingerprints are found by investigating officers.
“If we don’t catch you with the fingerprint, we will get you with the DNA … you break a glass to enter a building, you get cut, the blood that remains there is part of a person’s DNA,” he explained.
He said they are currently assiduously building their DNA database to match fingerprinting of suspects in the system.
Sankar said their staff will go up to 13 as they got the green light for five police officers and two forensic scientists in forensic DNA.
“We will be able to turn out more cases,” he said.
Head of the Homicide Bureau, Senior Superintendent Rishi Singh, said since the upgrades at the centre, the police have been receiving their test reports in a much timelier manner.
“As a result of that, we have been able to bring closure in many instances to members of the public whose families have suffered from crime in particular murders,” Singh said.
He said they have also been able to make several ballistic connections to firearms used in crime.
Sankar said their allotment of ballistic experts was now 23, up from four.
“There are now individual ballistic experts who will individually take cases and process them,” he said.
He said two years ago when Minister Hinds visited the centre, there were 7,000 firearms backlog cases with about 40,000 exhibits.
“The 21 police officers that have been trained have already knocked out 2,000 of those cases and those cases are very lengthy cases,” he said.
Sankar said they know their responsibilities and will improve step by step.
“We will continue in our drive to be better,” he said.