Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly announced today that the NYPD Crime Laboratory received a near perfect score in its recent accreditation assessment by the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/ Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB). 

            The NYPD Crime Laboratory satisfied 391 of the 397 (98.4%) criteria covered under the new and more rigorous accreditation standards for forensic laboratories.  The NYPD is the largest municipal crime laboratory in the United States to voluntarily submit to an assessment under new guidelines that more than double the number of criteria tested under the previous accreditation program.  

             “I am pleased that our crime lab scored well under this new more rigorous assessment,” Commissioner Kelly said. “This is the gold standard for Crime labs and the results show that we are holding ourselves to the highest standards established by the forensic science community.”

            The disciplines covered under the ASCLDS/LAB assessment of the NYPD Crime Laboratory included General Controlled Substances Analysis, Toxicology, Trace Evidence Analysis (Paint, Glass, Hair, Explosives), Firearms, Latent Print Processing, and Document Examination.  Specific categories of testing covered by the 397 criteria include Safety, Quality Assurance, Staffing, Records Management, Laboratory Equipment, Document Control, and Evidence Storage.

            The on site assessment by ASCLD/LAB was conducted from October 22-26 2007.  The NYPD Crime Laboratory is one of the busiest forensic laboratories in the world receiving approximately 160,000 cases annually for analysis.