One of the major thrusts is strengthening the forensic capabilities of the Police Department. Just a few weeks ago, twenty-seven police personnel were certified as international scenes of crime officers. Which of course begs the question – where’s the forensics lab and DNA testing facility which has been a campaign promise every election since 2008? Well there’s some good news in that regard as well, thanks to funding from the Central American Bank for Economic Integration.
Ret’d. Col. George Lovell, C.E.O., Ministry of National Security
“There is monies that have been set aside from that loan for the construction of a proper forensics laboratory. I just yesterday had a meeting of the Program Steering Committee which I chair, where we were looking at not just the time when we are going to see this happen, but the whole process, and I can tell you that in a very short time, and short can be relative, but in a very short time we should be seeing the whole loan arrangements being rolled out and the construction of the forensics lab taking place. One of the things we were trying to establish, or trying to acquire is a proper place with sufficient real estate for us to do a proper lab, and not only for us to have a very small property in which to construct and I think it was up to about almost four million US dollars for the lab, not including the equipment for it. All this will be done through the loan arrangement and we have as we currently speak, been dialoguing with the Americans to help us in terms of the drawings to ensure that they are done to proper scales. As you may well appreciate you can’t just get any engineer to construct a forensics lab, or else you’re going to have a building that looks good but is not ideal for forensics laboratory purposes, and so we are getting engineers that are skilled in that area through the CARSI program.”
Lovell says that discussion on capacity building for local technicians who will be staffing the facility is also currently underway. The monies should start being rolled out early next year, if all goes according to plan.
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