PITTSBURGH — There are historic numbers when it comes to shootings and violence in Allegheny County. And with that amount of crime comes a lot more evidence.
Each piece of evidence is tested at the Allegheny County Crime Lab in the Strip District before going back out the door after full analysis.
“It’s not necessarily what you see in any of those shows. It may be in bits and pieces, but our world is much different,” Mandy Tinkey said.
Tinkey is the laboratory director inside the crime lab. She took Channel 11 on an exclusive behind-the-scenes tour of what happens starting as soon as evidence is brought in the door.
“We may have items of evidence like fingerprints that were lifted in a crime scene. It could be a bottle that isn’t associated with the homeowners, it might be someone who broke in,” Tinkey said.
But sometimes it could be what you imagine.
“The casings, the fragments, the firearms coming in the door,” Tinkey said.
All items are broken out into seven different crime labs. The scientists behind the microscopes and computers are trained, sometimes for years, before they ever touch a piece of evidence.
The time they dedicate to each piece can vary.
“We may have a case, depending on the department it goes to, that type of evidence and that entire case may take a half hour to examine completely. But another case could take a month, depending on the volume of evidence coming in,” Tinkey said.
The scientists don’t know what they are dealing with until they get started. They test between 50,000 to 60,000 pieces of evidence each year and they’ve done that for the last five years, according to county statistics.
So, is there a backlog when it comes to processing?
“A backlog could be, there are 15 cases that need to be analyzed and they all came in the past two days, and someone could look at that and call it a backlog. Or it could be something that’s much higher,” Tinkey said.
Over the last few years, they’ve gone back and looked at where they could improve the process.
“Several divisions in this office have now eliminated their backlog to the point that when evidence for that division walks through the door, it immediately goes to the scientists so they can be in analysis,” Tinkey said.
Tinkey said they are working to make sure all seven divisions do have a zero backlog, but ultimately it comes down to the complexity of each case.
“If we maybe have a blanket that we need to examine, when we examine that blanket, that blanket may have one area of staining. Now that one area is sampled and move(s) forward in the process. Now in another case, a blanket comes in for the exact same analysis. We do the examination and there are 42 areas of staining. That changes things,” Tinkey said.
These types of cases add more time to the analysis process. But at the end of the day, no matter the amount of time, Tinkey said the scientists dedicate their lives to make sure everything that goes back out the door is accurate, reliable and credible.
“Without that passion, I don’t think we’d be as exceptional as an office as we are,” Tinkey said.
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