WY 2024 Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Project

The Wyoming State Crime Laboratory (WSCL) is the only accredited forensic crime laboratory in the State of Wyoming. The WSCL is accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 and AR 3125 standards through the ANSI National Accreditation Board (ANAB). All services provided by the laboratory are performed with no cost to submitting agencies. The WSCL’s accredited scope includes testing in the forensic subdisciplines of biology/DNA, firearms/toolmarks, drug chemistry, and toxicology. There are currently no other laboratories in Wyoming capable of providing confirmatory drug analysis in toxicology cases.

The WSCL has experienced challenges in continuing to address the increasing demand for analysis while also attempting to expand services in the toxicology and chemistry units. This funding request is specifically directed toward the following items:  consumable supplies, certification of the hoods used in the forensic laboratory, a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) instrument, analyst overtime, and calibration of instrumentation for the drug chemistry and toxicology units. The goals associated with the purchase of these supplies and services are to expand drug toxicology service in confirmatory drug analysis specific to the drug classes for opioids and opiates, to continue support for presumptive and confirmatory toxicology analyses, to continue support for drug chemistry analysis for controlled substances submitted to the WSCL, to decrease the backlog for all laboratory units, and to decrease turnaround time for analytical requests from customer agencies all while improving the quality and timeliness of forensic sciences.