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Niagara County Sheriff's Department Crime Scene Unit |
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Niagara County Sheriff's Department Crime Scene Unit |
The Niagara County Sheriff's Department Crime Scene Unit is located within the Sheriff's Department Complex at 5526 Niagara Street Extension, Lockport, NY.
The Crime Scene Unit (also known as ID) has three full time police officers permanently assigned to it, two sergeants and a technical sergeant. The technical sergeant oversees the operation of the unit and is directly responsible to the chief of the Criminal Investigations Bureau. Each sergeant shares in the daily tasks which include laboratory, office duties, field work, darkroom work, weekend, holiday and midnight call.
The Crime Scene Unit is primarily responsible for identifying, examining and collection of physical evidence in order to link a person to a crime.
All three sergeants are also responsible for fingerprinting subjects that are arrested by the Niagara County Sheriff's Department and processing the paperwork that follows. They also produce reports, fingerprint civilians for adoptions, licenses and pistol permits, compare fingerprints, testify in court, as well as photographic processing in the color photo lab of the department.
Types of evidence involved may include: fingerprints, palmprints, footprints, shoe/bootprints, tire impressions, tool marks, clothing, hairs, fibers, blood, semen, paint chips, glass fragments, soil samples, papers, drugs, weapons, tools, burn patterns, blood spatter patterns, and crime scene sketches.
The Crime Scene Unit responds to: homicides, suicides, suspicious deaths, rapes, robberies, burglaries, arsons, assaults, abductions, suspected child abuse, stolen vehicles, autopsies, fatal or serious injury motor vehicle crashes, etc.
The Crime Scene Unit uses 35mm, 120 format and Polaroid's as well as video tape at major crime scenes, although 35mm is the primary camera of choice. The Crime Scene Unit also uses latent fingerprint powders and liquids, "super glue" fumes, trace evidence vacuums and tape, casting materials, blood collection kits and alternate light sources to recover evidence.
The Niagara County Sheriff's Department has two digital mug shot capture stations. One inside the Inmate Processing Office in the jail and the other in the Crime Scene Unit office. The digital mug shot capture stations assist the Sheriff's Department, as well as the surrounding police agencies by providing instant mug shots and photo line-ups using photos of every inmate in the County Jail since December 1966, as well as arrested individuals processed in the Crime Scene Unit office.
Niagara
County Sheriff's Department
5526 Niagara Street Ext., P.O. Box 496
Lockport, New York 14095-0496
(716) 438-3393, Fax (716) 438-3302
