Our Mission: To provide a safe community where people can live, work, and thrive.
Tammy McIlveen celebrated her 20th anniversary as a Crime Scene Technician with the Chandler Police Department. Tammy is the first Crime Scene Technician to reach this milestone. She began her journey in 1997 when the Crime Scene Officer program was replaced by the civilian Crime Scene Unit. Tammy has been an instrumental part of the Forensic Services Section’s growth and has helped to develop many of the programs and events that the Unit participates in. Tammy has played an active role in training all of lab’s crime scene personnel over the years and many of the Department’s police officers.
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The forensic laboratory successfully completed their mid-cycle inspection. Each 4-year accreditation cycle includes the initial on-site assessment for accreditation followed by regular surveillance activities to assess continued compliance with accreditation requirements. There are over 400 standards that the lab must comply with to maintain their accreditation status.
The Forensics Services Section hosted the International Crime Scene Investigators Association’s 4th Annual CSI Conference at the Chandler Hilton. Over 70 people, representing more than 30 law enforcement agencies and forensic providers from throughout the United States, Jamaica, and Belize attended the conference. The focus of the conference was to provide training, education, and technology to crime scene investigators.
The Forensic Laboratory kept busy this year. In-house forensic scientists processed 743 blood-alcohol cases and 930 drug cases. The Latent Fingerprint Examiners conducted 1,300 latent print analyses and obtained 351 Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) hits. These “hits” generate latent print comparisons that may identify investigative leads in criminal cases. The Crime Scene Unit responded to 4,296 crime scenes ranging from vehicle burglaries to major crimes such as homicide and sex assault.
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On Saturday December 9th, the Crime Scene Unit participated in the Chandler Symphony Orchestra’s Fanfest 2017. The year’s theme spotlighted the Chandler Symphony Orchestra as it featured scores from Star Wars by Academy Award-winning composer John Williams. This all-age’s event was presented in partnership with the City of Chandler and the Downtown Chandler Community Partnership in preparation for the release of Star Wars: Episode VIII. This event also helped to celebrate the Orchestra’s 25th Anniversary season.
With additional savings, a number of other modifications were made to the vehicles. These included:
To highlight these changes, a training video was made to educate the Department’s Patrol employees. This video was shared with two of the up-fitting product vendors. One, in turn, posted the video on their social media site, garnering over fifty-thousand views and many inquiries. Some agencies have reached out directly to the Chandler Police Department about this unique set up design. In appreciation for the amount of attention they received, one of the vendors donated two complete set ups to the Department for 2018 builds.
Leveraging technology for improved fleet management, the team worked with the Police Technology Section to create a paperless vehicle service ticket and damage log. This new system tracks all work requests and logs turn-around time for each request, while maintaining work history and mileage information for each vehicle. This eliminates the need for a paper log for when a vehicle sustains minor damage. A future project is to convert the vehicle inspection sheet to electronic format as well.
Other accomplishments this year include the following: