Access to training and building networks for sharing expertise were two of many concerns voiced by rural law enforcement officials when they gathered in Ames March 28 for a workshop sponsored by the Midwest Forensics Resource Center. The workshop brought together county sheriffs and deputies, and local police officials from across the state for input on the forensic-related needs of rural law enforcement agencies.

Information gathered at the workshop will be used by MFRC to plot the course for the center’s future direction. Earlier this year, the MFRC received $3 million in federal funding from the National Institute of Justice Office of Science and Technology. The center’s mission includes research, training, casework and education in conjunction with ISU. Ames Laboratory will be administering the center.

While Iowa’s larger cities have their own crime-scene investigation units, rural law enforcement agencies face a number of challenges. The types of evidence associated with these trends can be more subtle and more complex than the types of evidence sought in other investigations. As a group, the rural officers were in agreement that they needed more information about current forensics practices, more education and training in forensics, more special casework assistance to help them with unusual situations, and new technology to speed their analysis of crime scenes and evidence.

Another common concern voiced was that such specialized training is expensive and difficult to find. And once local officers receive forensic training, they immediately become desirable recruits for higher-paying positions with larger departments.

"Small agencies provide the training and create a product that is very marketable," said Hamilton County Sheriff Scott Anderson. "For example, this area has recently lost several trained officers to the St. Paul area."

Another problem mentioned was that without some type of training certification, evidence collected and the way it is handled can be called into question when criminals are brought to trial. And it isn’t always the defense who’s raising the issues. According to some officers present, even their own county and local prosecutors are hesitant to use local expertise on the witness stand.

The scope of crimes also poses problems, particularly when they involve computer crime, intricate financial dealings, or even murder investigations. Some agencies may only deal with one such crime every several years, making it hard to justify a particular type of training or allow someone trained in such an area to regularly practice those skills.

One answer to a number of these questions is to form task forces among several local agencies in order to share expertise. This would lessen training costs for the individual departments and allow officers to apply their training more regularly. At the same time, such teams could increase the level of forensic skill practiced in rural Iowa. Representatives from state agencies also believed that some forensic analyses now performed by the ICL in Des Moines might be performed at the local level, and that this could help to speed local investigations.

Interestingly, both groups agreed that they needed to co-op new forms of decentralized training, new forms of crime-scene management, and new forms of forensic analyses. One example of this is the effectiveness of forensic training now cooperatively organized by the DCI, ICL, International Identification Association and the Marshalltown police department.

The results of the workshop will be circulated among the participants and the members of Iowa’s Congressional Delegation. The participants hope that their increasing need for forensic expertise, their serious resource shortages, and their willingness to share the costs associated with the modernization of rural forensic practices could attract congressional support in the future.

The overwhelming majority of the participants said (in their workshop evaluations) that this kind of workshop is necessary to voicing rural law enforcement’s forensic-related needs. They also agreed that MFRC, Ames Laboratory, and ISU sponsorship of the workshop made it more possible to attend.

The MFRC will serve Iowa and several surrounding states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas and Missouri.