E-Mail This Article to a Friend FIT TO PRINT? BPD starts rebuilding disgraced print lab BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

The Boston Police Department, which has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars outsourcing its fingerprint analysis since shutting the disgraced unit last fall, has finally hired the first members of its new in-house team. And in order to do so, it appears that they may have had to relax their requirements for the jobs.

As reported last weekend in the Boston Globe, the BPD has hired latent-fingerprint examiners Jennifer Hannaford and Rachel Lemery from the State of Vermont’s forensic laboratory. They will be civilian employees, rather than sworn BPD officers.

Officers formerly staffed the latent-print unit, without receiving much training, testing, or certification. The result was poor-quality work, eventually exposed in January 2004, when Stephan Cowans was found to have been wrongly convicted in large part because of an erroneous fingerprint match. (See "The Jig is Up," News and Features, May 14, 2004.)

Hannaford and Lemery faced no such controversy in Vermont, where they have both worked for about two years, according to Eric Buel, director of the Vermont lab. Lemery was trained there; Hannaford had several years’ experience with the Oakland Police Department, in California. "They were doing day-in, day-out work for us, comparing and analyzing fingerprints, and that’s something that Boston needs desperately down there," Buel says. "They were testifying in court. Everybody was very happy with their work."

Hannaford also has a fingerprint avocation; she makes and sells art prints made from her own fingerprints. (See them at www.printsinprint.com.)

But it’s hard to tell whether Hannaford and Lemery have the top-notch qualifications the BPD went looking for when it began headhunting four months ago. Hard to tell because the BPD has made no announcement, would not confirm Lemery’s hiring, and said that questions about Hannaford’s education, certifications, and other background would only be provided in response to a request under public-information law. A request filed Tuesday afternoon was not answered by press time.

But what can be learned about Hannaford and Lemery doesn’t appear to match the "minimum qualifications" described in the department’s July posting of two job openings, which no longer appear on the BPD’s Web site.

The listings were for a director of latent prints, and a senior criminalist to work under the director. The director, with a salary range of $74,375 to $97,338, required a minimum of 10 years’ experience as a latent-print examiner, including three as a supervisor. "Significant experience in new examiner training [and] supervision ... is required," according to the posting. Neither woman worked as a supervisor in Vermont, Buel says.

Minimum requirements for the senior criminalist position, which listed a pay range of $26,691 to $36,543, included four years of full-time experience as a latent-print examiner. Hannaford appears qualified for this position, but Lemery does not.