The Marshall University Forensic Science Center now analyzes DNA evidence from property crimes for the Huntington Police Department.
The collaboration of the West Virginia State Police and Cabell and Wayne county prosecutors are part of a study being conducted to measure the connection between DNA evidence analysis and solving property crimes.
Until a few weeks ago, the Marshall center only provided such analysis for Miami-Dade, Fla., and Charleston, S.C., but the need of a third location brought the project to Huntington as the Huntington Property Crime Initiative.
"This is a great opportunity because of the extremely high rate of property crimes here in Huntington," Huntington Police Chief Skip Holbrook said. "It will be interesting to see the effect of this study."
Terry W. Fenger, Ph.D., director of the center, said the project aims to look at different size populations. For about a year and a half, the center has provided analysis of evidence for the Miami-Dade Police Department, which functions as the large metropolitan area for the study. Various law enforcement agencies in agencies in Charleston, S.C., a medium metropolitan area, have been receiving evidence analysis from the center for about a year.
"Huntington fits nicely into the mold," Fenger said. "It's a small city in a rural state, and we had to make sure the agency we were dealing with had expertise in crime scene investigation. Huntington does."
Fenger said the study rests on the fact that when people commit a property crime, such as breaking and entering or theft, they often leave behind their DNA. When a crime is committed, members of the Huntington Police Department will collect the evidence and submit it to the Marshall center. The center will then create a DNA profile. The DNA profiles will be tested against the Combined DNA Index System database that contains DNA profiles of convicted offenders and missing persons.
DNA profiles can be used in various ways to help solve a property crime, Fenger said. They can identify perpetrators from previous crimes and link them to unsolved cases. Also, seemingly independent crimes can be linked together to a single perpetrator, and property crimes and violent crimes can be linked together.
"DNA analysis will enhance the investigation processes, especially for cases with no solvability factors that normally wouldn't be worked," Holbrook said.
Marshall secured the original funding for the forensic science center in the late '90s. Marshall funds the Huntington Property Crime Initiative through grants from the National Institute of Justice. This funding allows the center to provide the DNA testing at no cost.
Erica Duffield can be contacted at duffield@marshall.edu.
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