Crime lab at center of growing scandal

Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO

The tape recorder started rolling as two police investigators sat in their car in a hospital parking lot with Deborah Madden on Feb. 26. “You’re causing a huge nightmare for the city,” said one officer.

Now the 60-year-old technician and the obscure police crime lab where she worked for 29 years stand at the center of a scandal that has led to the dismissal of hundreds of criminal cases and jeopardized thousands more.

Forensics experts say Madden isn’t the first crime lab worker suspected of stealing drugs or other illegality, and San Francisco’s lab joins other cities in suffering a loss of credibility.

“It’s real hard to build a good reputation and it’s very easy to destroy it,” said Ralph Keaton, executive director of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.

The fallout from San Francisco’s lab scandal is still unfolding and experts say it could take years to clean up.

“I don’t think we have a full grasp on the magnitude of this yet,” said Jim Norris, former head of the lab. “A lot of this runs on trust that the lab results have been correct, but now people don’t think they are. So the whole system has grinded to a halt.”

Madden has not been charged with stealing from the lab. Her attorney, Paul DeMeester, said last week that Madden’s February talk with police was honest and forthright, and she “talked about all of the wrongdoing she had committed at the lab, which is very minimal.”

In the interview, investigators pleaded with Madden to confess skimming significant amounts of cocaine from drugs seized during arrests. A confession, they said, would take pressure off co-workers who also were questioned and would help begin to repair the damage.