Police and their Hostility to non-DNA Fields of Forensic Evidence.

Context for the Fibres Deep Dive.

Introduction

It’s really difficult to know where on earth to start with this. How far do I go back? What would make sense for readers, particularly those who don’t know much about textile fibres in a forensic context or about the madness that is the current provision of forensic science in England and Wales?

I guess it’s best to start with the simple fundamentals and build from there, but before I do it’s important to provide some context, set the baseline of where we were prior to the police takeover of forensic science in England and Wales in the late noughties to where we are now.

So in 2011/12 the year Forensic Science Service closed their website said this about fibres:

Textile fibre examination is the second most utilised type (after body fluids/DNA) often providing compelling evidence in a variety of casework situations.

There is simply no way that this evidence type can be described as anything else but a mainstream evidence type in 2011. Now, the police, the politicians, even the forensic science providers say that it is “niche”.

Three years later in 2015, I made this comment in a radio interview:

So what happened in that three years between 2012 and 2015. Well, two things. Obviously the loss of skills from the FSS was a major reason, but the huge drop in demand for fibre cases was another, and the reason for that was police control fuelled by police ideology. To understand how police forces felt about forensic science, forensic scientists and their chosen field of expertise, we need to understand the psyche of police and go back a little in time.

In his book “Written in Blood” Mike Silverman¹, the first Home Office Forensic Regulator, covers at length about his time as as SSM (Scientific Support Manager) for Kent Police. He describes the period where the Police and Forensic Science Service were getting used to the fact that one had to buy things from the other, he says:

In order to get police forces used to the idea of being charged for its services, the FSS had decided to introduce the changes in stages. For the first year there would be ‘soft’ charging. Invoices would be issued so that forces could see how much they were potentially spending and budget accordingly, but no money would change hands. This was intended to make it easier to ascertain how large a budget each force would need – and easier for the FSS to ascertain how much income it could expect to receive and to make sure the books balanced.

The problem was, no one at the FSS really got their head round the fact that it was suddenly being required to function as a profitable business and the prices they planned to charge were not based on the actual cost of providing the services. The initial pricing structure was worked out on the basis of the number of exhibits the FSS handled from each force. For example, it was worked out that the FSS needed to earn, say, £1 million from Kent, and knew it dealt with, perhaps, 10,000 exhibits each year from the force, so it calculated that if it charged £100 per exhibit, it would get the money it needed. Things soon became farcical when arguments broke out about whether an exhibit was a single item or a bag of items. In particular, there was the issue of shoes. I would put ‘a pair’ of shoes in one bag but the FSS would argue that they had to be treated separately and would cost twice the standard fee. The argument then turned to the treatment of a ‘pair’ of trousers and soon fizzled out.

After that, the FSS attempted to charge for its services by the hour. This seemed to make more sense, as this was how the staff doing the work were, effectively, paid and it was easier to work out how much was needed to cover costs and overheads. The problem, however, was that not all the staff at the FSS worked at the same pace. Some reporting officers (ROs) would take days or weeks to carry out a procedure and charge accordingly, while others would get things done in a matter of hours, saving huge amounts of money. The customer was therefore, in some cases, pretty much being charged for the inefficiency of some scientists.

Once hourly charging came in, I started requesting that particular ROs carry out my casework, as I knew they would cost less. This was refused, so I then argued that the FSS needed to have an average charge rather than a specific one to take account of the different timescales involved in preparing different cases.

The other difficulty with the hourly charging was that some FSS staff were in the habit of turning a job into a major research project. At one point, I received a sample of white powder from a PC who had been out on patrol and come across a youth who was firing an air gun using pellets containing this white powder, which ‘exploded’ on impact. I sent to the laboratory a simple request: was the powder an explosive substance? What we got back was a lengthy report showing that the powder had been subjected to every single test available, including a very clever inorganic synthesis of a fresh sample to show how it was made. There was a full breakdown of its chemical components, and all sorts of data about its possible origin. It was a hugely impressive piece of research, but the bill that came with it was for £32,000.

In response to this and similar incidents, Bob Green – one of my senior SOCOs – put together a comprehensive flow chart which we then enclosed with every submission to the lab. It was a complete breakdown of exactly which tests to carry out, which order to do them in and when to call myself or one of the other staff at Kent in order to get permission to carry out further testing.

Naturally, the reporting officers at the FSS hated the flow charts and, soon after they had been introduced, I got a visit from Gary Pugh, then an account manager for the FSS at Aldermaston, who invited me out to the laboratory to speak to the staff there. I expected a confrontational meeting with them – so far as they were concerned, we were telling them how to do their jobs and doing it in an incredibly patronizing way. I explained that I had a budget to manage and simply wasn’t able to allow them to do whatever they wanted the way we all had in the days before charging. I also explained my own philosophy when it came to forensic science: what is the point of carrying out a particular test if you don’t know any more after it than you did beforehand?

However, I could not help but think back to the time the police officer had brought the Babygro into the Metropolitan Police Laboratory and asked me to take a look at it. With no restrictions, I was able to take the extra time necessary to check for the presence of vaginal cells and prevent an innocent man being held in prison on remand until his trial. If that had happened after charging had been introduced, the instructions supplied with the exhibit would have been to test for the presence of semen and nothing else, and the end result might have been very different. Eventually, I came to an amicable agreement with the FSS. We agreed to stop sending the flow charts and they agreed not to carry out additional, unwanted research on our submissions.

What I find really interesting about Mike’s experiences on both sides of the border between police forces and forensic science laboratories, is how the system forces people to behave the way the do depending on who employs them and which side of the border you are located. Police forces view forensic science laboratories they do not control with suspicion, they believe that they must keep them on a tight leash and that actually, deep deep down, they won’t say it publicly, but their actions betray the fact they believe they know better than the scientists do. Mike Silverman clearly knew the consequences of his philosophy from his personal case experience at the Met, but that didn’t stop him.

The issue over product based charging and time based charging, should not have come as a surprise to every human being on the planet who buys a product, or hires a tradesperson or leaves their car in a garage for repair. Why would we expect monetization of forensic science to be exceptional? If you get quotes from two plumbers to plug your leak you will get the one who will do it quickly and the one who will do it slowly and that will be reflected in the bill, but you’re sure as hell not going to tell the plumber how to fix the leak. Why do police think they are so special that they can tell forensic scientists how to do their job? Precisely who’s interests are they acting in when they assume that role?

Whilst hostility to independent forensic science was brewing under the surface in the 90s following the introduction of charging, the advent of DNA technologies would accelerate that to the moon. For the first time since the discovery of fingerprints, the police had an opportunity to react to an amazing new tool, a new technology. Would they embrace the technology and expand the forensic toolbox for the criminal justice system, or would they take the opportunity to use this tool to conveniently dispose of tools they hated, didn’t value or understand?

This from Jim Fraser in his book “Murder Under the Microscope”²:

Throughout my career, I have been engaged with detective training at many levels. A very common question at the end of these sessions is: what science is new; what can give us an edge over the bad guys? There are many false assumptions embedded in this question. That something new will be more effective than what is already available, that it will be applied effectively, and that it will give the police an advantage over criminals.

On this last point, only rarely can technology be used to get ahead of the bad guys, because the bad guys are almost always lighter on their feet and more entrepreneurial than conservative, hierarchical police organisations. If this is a war, it’s an asymmetric war. Police culture conditions what technologies the police use and how they use them. The culture is so strong that it can override technology even when imposed from the outside….

….How the police use forensic science is set in the same overall context of how they understand, use or ignore technology. It has become obvious to me over a long career that the police do not understand forensic science. I am not alone in this view; it is shared by most other forensic scientists.

Quite apart from those cases that come to the attention of the media and the public, there is plenty of documentary evidence of this issue too. In 1996, the year I joined Kent Police, the police service and the FSS published a joint review of how forensic science was used in England and Wales. The report stated that forensic science and forensic science labs were seen as something separate from investigations, and that communication between forces and labs was ‘often poor’.

It went on to say that awareness of forensic science* was also poor and often insufficient for purpose; that is, detectives didn’t have adequate knowledge of forensic science.

In 2000, there was a follow-up review, which found that few forces had bothered to read the first review, and concluded that ‘ignorance of its contents was widespread’. In relation to police training and knowledge of forensic science, the report stated: ‘A recurrent theme … was the lack of awareness at all levels, particularly the operational levels.’ In 2002, a third audit was carried out.

This was a much slimmer document, much of which consisted of repeating the recommendations from previous reports. It concluded: ‘Overall this [report] has revealed a mixed take-up of the recommendations [in previous reports].’ Knowledge and training in forensic science were not mentioned; the issue had been dropped.

In 2005, I gave evidence to the parliamentary inquiry* into forensic science. Amongst other things I said, ‘The evidence … is consistently clear, [police] knowledge [of forensic science] needs to improve and … their training needs to improve.’ In March 2011, there was a second parliamentary inquiry. The opening line of the report described forensic science in England and Wales as ‘in a near constant state of flux for over a decade’. Amongst many observations in my written submissions to the committee, I made it plain that police knowledge of forensic science, on the basis of reviews carried out by the police themselves, was not fit for purpose.

This was put to the chief constable who led on forensic issues at the time, Chris Sims; he disagreed, although he accepted that the levels of knowledge were variable. I guess the police just don’t know what they don’t know. Or the reports I cited were conveniently forgotten. There was a third parliamentary inquiry in 2013.

By this time the institutional structures of forensic science in England and Wales were falling apart. The FSS had closed and the police service acted like supermarkets, controlling the market, driving down prices and commoditising services. The forensic science labs were the farmers. The single dominant rationale in the police contracts was price. It was, in the words of one individual from the Home Office, ‘a race to the bottom’. In 2019, there was yet another select committee inquiry.

Amongst other things, it heard evidence that understanding of forensic science by lawyers and judges was variable and juries overestimated its significance. It would seem that the criminal justice system is a knowledge-free zone when it comes to forensic science.

By the mid noughties DNA had taken over, all three major players, police forces, government and the forensic science laboratories, public and private were complicit in it. If you were a forensic scientist operating in non-DNA related areas, you could see where the money was being spent, and it was not in your area.

The government injected huge funds to develop the DNA database, gave the police shed loads of money just to spend on DNA and found willing suppliers in the FSS and new private companies seeking a slice of that action. DNA was a drug, the police were the junkies paying for their fix with someone else’s cash and forensic science laboratories, public and private, were the drug dealers making bank.

During the DNA boom, looking back at it now, it was a completely mad time. My abiding memory of working on the serious cases during that period is from case conferences with my colleagues and police forces, discussing results and strategies etc.

Initially I used to attend case conferences from the start of the meeting. Irrespective of police force, it would be tend to be dominated by the exhibits officer and their spreadsheet of exhibits and because they weren’t spending their own cash, the police force submitted huge amounts for DNA. It would go something like this:

Exhibit officer “Exhibit 12345 Cigarette butt found at scene - what did you get from that”

Biologist “ DNA profile unsuitable for the database”.

Exhibit Officer “ Can you do any better with that?”

Biologist “Yes we can possibly enhance it by running our [insert name of latest DNA advance]"

Exhibit Officer “ What do you think gaffer?”

Senior Investigating Officer (SIO) “How much does that cost?”

Biologist “Well our [insert name of latest DNA advance] analysis, you must understand it is a premium service so it will cost £2000 per item, and of course there are no guarantees that it will improve on the profile we have now”

SIO “ Well we have got sweet ***** **** so far so fill your boots”

….and multiply that exchange by a few hundred exhibits. Six hours later having exhausted their list and agreed to £50000+ more of enhanced premium DNA services, they would look at me.

SIO “Tiernan what can you do to help”

Me “Well I could look for fibres”

SIO “Sounds expensive, and I’ve never had one case where fibres has worked, so let’s put the fibres on hold and wait for the DNA.”

Me “How many cases have you actually commissioned fibre work to be done?”

SIO “Well I’ve never commissioned fibre work to be done and I don’t know anyone else that has”

Several months later and I’ve adopted a new approach. I don’t turn up for the case conferences until they’ve finished with their spreadsheet and have called me on the phone to join them. I enter the room.

SIO “Tiernan, we’ve spent all our cash, the ******** [insert name of latest DNA advance] hasn’t worked and we’re working on fumes, fibres is our last hope and we’ve still got sweet **** **** and to be honest I’m only authorising it because I need to ensure I don’t get criticism when the case is reviewed later. We’re two weeks from trial.”

Me “Well, the best I can do now is a limited fibre examination and in order to do even that in the time frame of the trial it will mean other cases I’m working on will face delays. I will likely have to pull in resources from other areas of the lab to assist with some of it which will mean it will likely be charged at a premium, a limited fibre examination now probably cost the same as a full proper examination done 6 months ago and with a reduced probability of success”.

SIO “I don’t care about your other cases, I only care about mine, and irrespective of the outcome I need to do this As for the cost, just get on with it.”

Me “I currently have a dozen serious cases I’m working on with a dozen SIOs from a dozen other police forces who feel as strongly about their cases as you feel about yours. Why should I place your needs above theirs? Do me and them a favour, next time we’re in this room on whatever the next case might be, instead of wasting 6 months and £50k+ on some long shot where the biologist has already told you that its unlikely to work, just get the fibre work done at a time when it might actually give you a chance of finding something that could make a difference, otherwise we’re wasting everyone’s time and money and we’ll just be repeating this cycle of doom over and over again.”

Narrator: [The SIO did not do Tiernan a favour next time]

This clip from the series “Expert Witness”³ is a real life example of how hostile police forces are to non-DNA fields, it was part and parcel of my every day experiences as a forensic fibre expert dealing with 43 police forces in England and Wales for over 20 years. When you look at it, look at it in the context of a system of provision of Forensic Science in England and Wales in 2025 now, where there is unlikely to be someone of the calibre of Angela Gallop who would be willing to stand up to police officers, particularly in the context of the real fear that forensic science laboratories have of upsetting police forces who they rely on for income.

The fact that the narrator describes Angela “risking her reputation” just to get some fibres work done, shows just how extreme the police forces attitude to non-DNA forensic science has become, bearing in mind that this was nearly 20 years ago and things have worsened considerably since, but more on that in later posts.

Of course fibres turned out to be the key which unlocked the case, who knew right?

Given the digital forensic revolution, I see history repeating itself, this time, instead of DNA, digital forensics is the new cash cow and physical forensics is once again the sacrificial lamb. Placing areas of forensic evidence in competition with another is a disease of the mind of the police, it was a flawed strategy then and it is a flawed strategy now.

Ok next post - fundamentals of fibres, I promise.

1. For historians of forensic science, well worth a read and currently incredible value £1.15 for a paperback (as of April 2025).

2. Also an excellent read, not quite as good a bargain as Mike Silverman’s right now but highly recommended.

3. From the episode “Fibres and Diamonds”, previously on iplayer but also available here (as of April 2025)