 Hello and welcome to Issues and Answers with me, Claudia Monlui, Communications Officer within the Department of Home Affairs and National Security, and my guest, Ms. Fernanda Henry, Director of Forensic Science Services at the Forensic Science Lab. Welcome to our discussion and I think a good point of departure would be for you to share a little bit about who is the new face at the Forensic Lab. Sure. Thank you. Thank you for having me. And thank you for this opportunity to showcase the laboratory. Fernanda Henry, I like to start by saying that I'm a black woman and who is extremely passionate about forensics and feels very, very humbled and grateful to be the new director of Forensic Science Services. I, in my background, in forensics started with my educational training in forensic biology at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada in minus 30 degree weather some days and I thought, what am I doing here? You know, we're here for a purpose so we made it through and shortly after that I returned home and the lab was functioning at the time but I didn't get a position there and I became a graduate teacher at my alma mater at St. Joseph's Convent. So I taught sciences and singing and music for three years at the convent and those were amazing years. I got to teach them phenomenal women who are making such significant contributions to society today and shortly after that there was a position available at the laboratory and I was blessed to be transferred to the lab in 2007 so I became a forensic scientist too in 2007 so I got to fulfill that dream then. I pursued my master's degree in 2011 and I had started, I'd been trained as a DNA analyst and it was my intention to promote to the DNA technical leader. So a technical leader, the requirements for a technical leader would be three years of experience as a DNA analyst in addition to a master's degree. So my technical leader at the time she encouraged me to get my master's and so I did, I pursued my master's degree in forensic DNA with Oklahoma State University and here I am as the director today. And here you are also making your wonderful contribution and it is always a very very valuable thing I must add and I'm sure viewers would agree to have a Saint Lucian who understands the psyche of the Saint Lucian people holding such very critical posts of leadership across the community, across the public service, etc. And so we've heard a lot about the forensic lab and not necessarily... Not always good. Yes, yes. Good and not always correct information and so I'm very happy to have these voice from within with us here today to educate us in some regards and in others of course to set the record straight. Yes. Yes. But before we delve into these issues perhaps we could begin with the journey of forensics in Saint Lucian. Sure. And again you know when we talk about information and what is correct or what is unknown in certain respects I think the history of forensics is largely unknown in Saint Lucian. Forensics started around 1980 I think I was still probably in my mother's womb at that time. I'm not sure but and it started with Mr. Kaui, Carlton Kaui who's Canadian and he was the chemist on board and Mr. Louis Murray who was the trace analyst, he's a trace analyst and police scientist. So the two of them started the laboratory at the Ezra Long Lab in the 80s and then we had other Saint Lucians joining and that is such a great thing for the history of our lab that we have always had this involvement of Saint Lucians in operations. So we had Ms. Alexandra, well she was in Twizzle at the time, she's Mrs. Dubile now, then we had Ms. Annis Charles who joined, there was a gentleman, Mr. Chalry who was also employed there and they continued until I believe 2004 then there was a short brief break and the library opened in 2007 when I joined so we were still only doing chemistry and trace at that time and crime scene work as well, Mr. Murray did a lot of crime scene work with the police. So when I joined that was what I was trained to do, I wasn't the chemist but I did trace and serology and crime scene work together with Mr. Murray. And then we moved to Tapion, they built the fancy building that we have now and we moved there in 2009, we had the official opening on December 21st and we commenced operations there doing chemistry on a much larger scale, trace and serology and then we introduced DNA which had not been part of the initial plan, so that is our history. Well we would certainly love to thank the trailblazers in that area and I'm sure that they are pleased to see the unfolding of a modern day version of the area, the initial concept having seen it grow from strength to strength over the years. So you did indicate that the lab is open? Yes it is, and the lab is operational. It is operational, albeit and I'm sure this is public knowledge, we have approached it in a phased manner, so when I said that we were capable of chemistry, trace and DNA because of the changes in our staff compliments since I became the director we have decided to have a phased approach to the opening so we're only commenced operations with chemistry at the moment but we intend to gradually phase everything back in to make the lab fully operational again. I also want to include the contributions of the office of the pathologist so I want to mention Dr. King as well, one of the trailblazers for forensics in St. Lucia too, and still very active in that area, so the lab is opened, it is operational and the perception of the public is that the lab is linked with criminal justice, so when you say a phased approach is that something that is normal, it is perhaps more productive to go in this direction rather than to try to make some major lips which may not be the best approach, I think for us in our context and I think that is what's key that it is we have to look at it in our context, our context is that it had been closed for some time and our staff compliment is very small so for us to have decided to put all of the services online at the same time with the staff compliment that we have now I think would have been counterproductive so in our context having a phased approach is the best approach I think so we can because what we're doing is we're making it more sustainable that we can support services with our current staff compliment, whatever services that we do not provide on site we outsource on behalf of the police so we are the lead authority on forensic work that is happening here or abroad on behalf of the justice system if we will and we also have the opportunity to work on our quality procedures our quality system to ensure that it is robust it is well-built so that as we add more services that they adjust it's easy for them to just fit in seamlessly to an already established quality system at this point viewers we will take a break but we will be right back with you in a bit think about the children think about the children how will we save them? chemicals and GMOs are not the solution use organic and join excessive agrochemical use, additives and genetically modified foods are harmful to health and the environment join the good food revolution grow, buy and consume organic a message from Rye St Lucia and the Ministry of Sustainable Development funding from the GEF small grants program UNDP and welcome back viewers and we are moving right along with the director of forensic science services Ms. Fernanda Henry and my question to you now has to do with the synergies and the constituents of the lab and there are many players but then how do they all fall in line and smoothly okay co-ordinates sure our stakeholders as we call them our clients because we believe that we we render a service those would be the Rosinershire police force primarily because they are the ones who investigate all crime-related activity then we deal with the DPP's office then we also have the crime scene units because they are the ones that the crime scene is collecting the evidence and then we have the office of the pathologist so we attend postmortems and assist at postmortems provide consultation and guidance etc so those are really our constituents our clients and stakeholders at the lab and if possible on an ordinary working day can you maybe give us a small scenario our time is limited where your role would come in sure let's take a sharp-force homicide activity stabbing with a knife once the incident occurs and let's say the victim passed on the scene so the victim would not then be transferred to the hospital and we would have had a pronouncement of death at the scene so the crime scene unit is activated along with the pathologist who can declare that the individual has passed and crime scene will now will call for forensic technical assistance so I would go out to the scene with them and we would begin searching you know so crime scene would do the searching and cordon off of course there's scene security first and then we would search for possibly a weapon and we would try to reconstruct the scene documented with photography etc and then we would try to with the reconstruction try to imagine how the scenario would have played out to help us in retrieving the evidence that would be useful in the prosecution of the case and when we say prosecution we don't necessarily mean that we're only looking to find a guilty party but if there is a scenario where we are dealing with the wrong assailant the wrong suspect we want to be able to to exonerate that person as well and forensics has to do that forensics has to be objective and unbiased and impartial so our evidence collection is not not geared towards you know finding anybody culpable but for it to to speak for it to to give a story so after that then the evidence is taken to the evidence unit at the police and then we have a week we consults and we talk about what it is that we have and how we're going to pursue what sort of action we're going to take and we bring in the DPB's office so we get you know the legal counsel to say well how should we proceed once we decided that then we request evidence then we analyze and carry out the tests that we need to we produce a report it goes to the investigator it goes to the DPB's office when it gets to court and they call us to provide expert witness testimony if there's any explanation that needs to be done we would have to do that and then our second crime scene is what I neglected before we get to before we get to court our second crime scene is at the mortuary our post mortem is crime scene number two so that all of us would be there so the crime scene unit would be there I would be there to consult and the pathologists are the ones carrying out the autopsy and we would do another round of evidence collection there to help put all the pieces together which would eventually go to court and the DPB's office you know stays that ship thank you for that very vivid and comprehensive description and it is in a nutshell no doubt and I believe that there is so much we are just scraping the surface viewers because of the time we are allocated for this discussion but there are young persons out there who want to get into that field is there room for them of course of course and when I say so I say it in a holistic way I don't want anyone to be restricted to the context of St. Lucia because science is amazing I think and forensic science is as I said for me it is really about service so anyone with that attitude and wanting to help people forensics is you know and not to mention that you love science you know forensics is it but for young people who are pursuing who want to pursue forensics there is the natural science aspect or the pure science aspect but there are also humanity related humanities subjects the arts so to speak that you know that can be considered with forensic so we have forensic psychology we have counselors and so on so they can go into social work and help with forensics because we have victims who need the support then there is victim advocate groups that can be part of the whole forensic scheme and then we have the hardcore analysts who have to do the chemistry and the physics and the biology and the forensic science and so it's really you know it can really be you know you don't have to stick to science but you can be an arts specimen to be involved in forensics Wow with just two minutes left I almost had press to pose one of many questions just percolating in my head right now but we have a perception now which comes about because there is something called the CSI effect so can we speak to this very quickly before we conclude? If I can be as succinct as I can the CSI effect is as a result of all the shows that we all of the crime related shows that we see on TV they sensationalize crime and they sensationalize the analysis of crime it's very quick everything happens within an hour or 30 minutes sometimes and it creates a false perception a false expectation of what should really be obtained in reality every case is different the complexities of a case may differ from another so we may be able to go through to analyze a case in three days whereas another one will take us three months or three years so the CSI effect just kind of plays to our psyche for the expectation that isn't realistic and I can well imagine that it also creates a false perception in the minds of some persons that they can get away with certain things that is true and that may not be the case indeed so I think our best advice to everyone is to abide by the law and that brings us to the conclusion already viewers of a very interesting discussion we promise you that we will be back to touch on many other salient points in the near future but for now I need to thank my guest once again Director of Forensic Science Services at the St. Lucia Forensic Lab Miss Fernanda Henry it was nice having you see you again sometime soon