Crime lab getting grant, new drug detection equipment

The Lake County Crime Laboratory’s drug detection efforts will be getting a boost with the help of a pair of resolutions passed by county commissioners Feb. 22.

Commissioners approved a $130,000 grant from the Ohio Attorney General’s Office that will in part be used to replace older equipment used to analyze controlled substances.

Lab officials said a new Gas Chromatograph/Mass Spectrometer (GC/MS) is needed to replace an older model that is no longer serviceable and for which it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find replacement parts. The new equipment is also needed to help keep up with the exponential increase of opioid cases in the county.

Criminalist David Green said it will help them get drug cases done faster, get results back to police departments and into the courts faster and “hopefully adjudicated faster.”

The new equipment will cost more than $50,000, requiring the commissioners to approve a request for bids, which they did Feb. 22.

The crime lab is seeking voter approval of an additional .4-mill levy in the May 8 primary election.

Green said the equipment goes “hand-in-hand” with the levy.

“We need more finances to address the heroin epidemic, which has led to more burglaries, which has led to more violent crimes,” he said.

Over the past few years, the Lake County Crime Lab has seen new fentanyl analogues pop up. In some cases, they’ve been able to detect analogues for the first time in Ohio. That was the case with U-47700, first detected in 2016.

Crime Laboratory Director Linda Erdei said seeing new analogues “throws a monkey wrench into everything.”

Erdei said the Attorney General’s Office has given money to crime labs across the state to help with efforts to combat the opioid epidemic that continues to grow.

In addition to the new equipment, she said they’re also going to use the funds to make employees safer.

“We’re getting these powders, we don’t know what they are,” she said. “(Employees) have to wear masks, they have to wear gloves, they have to be very careful what they do.”

She said they have about 12 units of the opioid-reversal antidote naloxone on hand in case of accidental exposure.

“Things are very different at the laboratory; we’re going to need to make safety changes, building a different wall to keep those drugs isolated from the rest of the laboratory,” Erdei said. “There’s a lot of concern about safety at the laboratory.”

One option available to prosecutors in Lake County is charging drug dealers with manslaughter if the drugs they sold were responsible for a victim’s death.

Erdei’s office plays a role in those cases, looking at things like who left fingerprints on the bags. That’s something she said a lot of other crime labs don’t do.

“We do that in an attempt to find the people providing the drugs,” she said. “Maybe we can get them off the street and curtail this.”

This is known as “touch DNA,” which is skin cells left behind on things people touch.

“Not just a gentle touch, but you might handle something and leave your DNA behind,” Erdei said.

“So in this case, we look at different drug paraphernalia, packaging, swab it and try to get a DNA sample.”

Erdei said they don’t always get a result from that because the suspect might not leave enough behind.

“So we look at it at the point of view we have to try everything we can to try identify who sold the drugs,” she said.