Pubdate: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 Source: Baltimore Sun (MD) Copyright: 2000 The Baltimore Sun, a Times Mirror Newspaper. Contact: 501 N. Calvert Street P.0. Box 1377 Baltimore, MD 21278 Fax: (410) 315-8912 Website: http://www.sunspot.net/ Forum: http://www.sunspot.net/cgi-bin/ultbb/Ultimate.cgi?actionintro Author: Caitlin Francke LAB FINGERS GUILTY DRUG Analysis: An integral role in the city's push to clear a backlog of criminal cases is played by the police crime lab, where drugs confiscated in up to 65 cases are tested daily. ~~~ Jawad Abdullah's office is a window into Baltimore's thriving illicit drug trade. Literally. In front of his desk on the 10th floor of Baltimore police headquarters on East Fayette Street, a row of eight-foot windows frames the drug-riddled streets of East Baltimore. Abdullah carefully drops white powder found just 11 blocks away into tubes to test them for cocaine and heroin. "See the bright blue color?" Abdullah asks, pointing to a small dish in which he has combined the powder with a chemical. "This is cocaine." More tests need to be done before the chemist can have court-worthy proof. How quickly those tests can be performed is critical to the new plan for speedier justice in Baltimore. The reform plan, which began a monthlong trial period on Aug 1., aims to dispose of as many as 50 percent of all minor cases - mainly drug possession - within 24 hours. Suspected drugs will have to be analyzed within a matter of hours, instead of the week it takes now. Prosecutors need those results to take a case to court or to encourage a defendant to plead guilty as quickly as possible. "There is no way the defense attorney is going to allow their client to admit to something without knowing what it is," said John H. Lewin Jr., co-chair of the committee steering reform of the city courts. "There is no way the prosecutor will accept something which is really a guess on their part. The judge needs to know, too. It wouldn't matter if this were such a small number of cases that come before the court, but these are the majority of the cases ." To accomplish the rapid turnaround, city police are planning to hire five more chemists within the next few months. The new chemists, who will bring the total to 20, will work a night shift so the drug analysis unit can be operational almost 24 hours a day. Already the chemists are testing drugs at a rapid clip. Last year, city chemists analyzed about 27,000 cases-four times the number tested by New Orleans police and 45 percent more than Philadelphia police according to a survey done by Baltimore's drug unit. Each city chemist handles about 1800 cases a year, the survey shows, while other chemists in different states take on about 700 apiece. Edgar F. Koch, director of Baltimore's crime lab, estimates the lab will be testing about 65 cases every night under the new plan. Each sample can take up to three hours to test. "We'll have an answer for the state's attorney before she goes to court," Koch said. Delicate work Police considered using robots for the testing instead of hiring more chemists. They decided it's quicker to have people conduct the tests because so much delicate work is required. The drug analysis unit of the city crime lab is an oddly clinical and sanitary scene in the midst of the out-of-control drug problem on the streets. On Abdullah's desk are dozens of petri dishes, a pile of evidence bags and glass jars filled with chemicals. Perched on a stool in his white lab coat, he has samples from 12 cases in various stages of testing. Abdullah, 45, who has degrees in civil engineering and chemistry, is examining yellowish-brown rocks seized from a suspected drug dealer on Rutland Avenue. He weighs the rocks - 19 grams - and then rolls one of them out of a red-top vial, crushes it and puts tiny bits into petri dishes. Next, he drops a series of six chemicals into the dishes to figure out what the substance most likely is. "This could be crack. This could be cocaine. This could be nothing," says Abdullah's boss, Shiv Soni, manager of the drug analysis unit. Color tests One chemical turns crack and heroin light blue and pure cocaine bright blue. Another chemical has no effect on crack or cocaine but turns heroin purple. Another chemical turns heroin green but has little effect on others. The different chemicals are necessary because some drugs, such as heroin and morphine, have similar characteristics but the color tests help distinguish them. Forty-five percent of the drugs that come into the lab are cocaine or crack, Soni says. Thirty percent are heroin and 15 percent are marijuana. The rest are other drugs, such as amphetamines or "burn," fake drugs sold by street dealers. After the color test, the contents of the red-top vials appear to be cocaine. Abdullah prepares to confirm his preliminary findings. Bits of the drugs are placed in a vial with ethanol alcohol, and put into a series of scientific instruments which break down the components of the chemical. The instruments vaporize the substance to separate the elements and give chemists a detailed picture of what it is in the white powder. An hour later, Abdullah's drugs come back as 90 percent cocaine. Koch said that concentration means the person caught with it is likely a dealer and was preparing to cut the substance with something else, like baking soda. That will be critical information for the prosecutor to determine how the case should be charged and how involved the defendant is in the drug world, Koch said. It is the scientists' documentation of exactly what kinds of drugs are being bought and sold, right under their windows. Said Koch: "This is the fingerprint of that drug." - --- MAP posted-by: Jo-D