COVID

The mobile crime scene lab equipment must be operationally health and safety compliant, including PPE, hard hat, reflective equipment, gloves, and Covid compliance.

“PPE, personal protective kit, hard hat and reflective equipment, which you must have in that working environment. It is an operational health and safety compliant facility... and if I am correct, at that stage was COVID. So, we had to be COVID compliant as well.”

During the COVID period, there were challenges in staffing for safeguarding narcotics exhibits since most entities operated on skeleton staffs, making it difficult to get extra people from teams such as the TRT, Highway Patrol, and Flying Squad to assist, but availability has improved since then.

“it was during COVID times, and there was a number of challenges because most entities operated on skeleton staff... to get extra people like the likes of the TRT, the Highway Patrol, the Flying Squad, to assist on actually safeguarding these exhibits was a challenge at that time, but that has also bettered from then to now in terms of availability”

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) could not assist with photographing exhibits at the scene due to skeleton staff from COVID and storage space problems; the LCRC was busy at another scene and arrived late to photograph the scene and the remaining bags handed to them for DNA and fingerprint analysis.

“Forensic Science Laboratory indicated that they were not able to assist as they were running on skeleton staff because of COVID and also had a problem with storage space . LCRC was busy at another scene , arriving a little bit later , and dealt with the photographing of the scene and the exhibits and the ‘leftovers ’ of the black carry bags as well as that was handed to the LCRC member for DNA and fingerprint analysis .”

Due to the lack of storage space and COVID-related staffing shortages, the Forensic Science Laboratory was unable to assist with photographic documentation of the exhibits at the scene, which was managed instead by LCRC arriving late.

“Forensic Science Laboratory indicated that they were not able to assist as they were running on skeleton staff because of COVID and also had a problem with storage space . LCRC was busy at another scene , arriving a little bit later , and dealt with the photographing of the scene and the exhibits ...”