The Graveyard Shift

Archive for the ‘Digital Evidence and High-Tech Crimes’ Category

Sergeant Josh Moulin supervises the Central Point Police Department’s Technical Services Bureau and is the Commander of the Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force. He is one of approximately 470 Certified Forensic Computer Examiner’s worldwide and has been trained by a variety of organizations in digital evidence forensics. Sgt. Moulin has also been qualified as an expert witness in the area of computer forensics and frequently teaches law enforcement, prosecutors, and university students about digital evidence.

Beginning his public safety career in 1993, Josh started in the Fire/EMS field working an assortment of assignments including fire suppression, fire prevention, transport ambulance, and supervision. After eight years Josh left the fire service with the rank of Lieutenant and began his law enforcement career. As a Police Officer Josh has had the opportunity to work as a patrol officer, field training officer, officer in charge, arson investigator, detective, and sergeant.

For further information about the Central Point Police Department please visit www.cp-pd.com, and for the Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force visit www.hightechcops.com. To reach Sgt. Moulin you can e-mail him at joshm@hightechcops.com.

Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force Attains Accreditation

It has been a while since I have blogged for Lee, and part of the reason behind that is because I have spent the last year working on getting our forensics laboratory accredited. I thought I would provide some information about lab accreditation in this blog.

Between blogs I have received several emails from different authors asking questions and I am always happy to reply. If you have any questions for me surrounding high-tech crimes or digital evidence (or other police related questions), feel free to send me an email.

On July 17th 2009 the Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force attained the prestigious American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB) Accreditation and joined the ranks of some of the most premier digital evidence forensics laboratories in the world.

ASCLD/LAB (www.ascld-lab.org) offers voluntary accreditation to any crime lab that can comply with their large number of standards. Criteria include all aspects of operations such as management, personnel training and qualifications, health and safety, evidence handling, proficiency testing, lab security, and forensic practices. Part of the accreditation process is an onsite inspection by ASCLD/LAB trained professionals who inspect the laboratory, interview personnel, and review case files and practices. As of September 13th 2009, there are 366 crime labs accredited by ASCLD/LAB worldwide.

After over a year of dedicated hard work and preparation, the Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force (SOHTCTF) achieved their accreditation for the Digital and Multimedia Discipline in both the computer and video forensic sub disciplines. There are 97 different quality standards applicable for digital forensics laboratories that are rated as Essential, Important or Desirable. The task force complied with 100% of the Essential, 92% of Important (only 75% required), and 94% of Desirable (only 50% required).

The SOHTCTF is the only standalone local law enforcement digital evidence forensics laboratory to be accredited by the ASCLD/LAB legacy program in the world. The SOHTCTF joins only 54 other laboratories in the world that are accredited to perform some aspect of forensic analysis on digital evidence.

(Left to Right: - Det. Bloomfield, Sgt. Moulin, Support Specialist Miller)

According to a letter announcing the SOHTCTF’s accreditation, ASCLD/LAB Chair Jami St.Clair wrote, “Accreditation is granted only after a thorough evaluation of a laboratory’s management practices, personnel qualifications, technical procedures, quality assurance program and facilities. Accreditation is the result of extensive commitment of resources and much preparation by the management and personnel in your laboratory.”

Accreditation provides reassurance that the task force’s work is of the highest quality and the laboratory and personnel have gone through an external review by an independent organization.

Background on the Southern Oregon High-Tech Crimes Task Force

The SOHTCTF was first created by the City of Central Point Police Department in 2005 and in 2007 was joined by personnel from the City of Medford Police Department. The SOHTCTF is a regional, multijurisdictional task force performing cyber crime investigations and digital evidence forensics for approximately 30 federal, state and local law enforcement agencies throughout Oregon. Some of the agencies include the FBI, DEA, ICE, BLM, DOJ, Oregon State Police and multiple agencies in Jackson, Josephine, Douglas, Curry and Klamath Counties. While the task force typically provides services throughout Oregon, it has assisted in investigations in the States of Washington, California, Idaho, Montana and Texas.

The SOHTCTF performs forensic examinations on digital evidence such as computers, cellular phones, servers, removable media, digital cameras and other peripheral devices to support criminal investigations such as homicides, terrorism, child sexual exploitation, white collar crimes, and other felony crimes. In addition, the task force conducts proactive undercover Internet investigations and a large amount of public education courses. To date the task force has provided 218 hours of training to over 1800 people nationwide.

The examiners within the task force are highly trained and certified and have all been qualified as expert witnesses in digital forensics in both state and federal court on numerous occasions. The SOHTCTF examiners are recognized nationwide and frequently called upon to teach across the nation for organizations such as the National District Attorney’s Association, National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse and the National Association of Attorneys General, teaching how to investigate and prosecute technology based crimes against children.

The SOHTCTF has seen a 28% increase in cases submitted and an 8% increase in the amount of evidence submitted for forensic analysis from just last year. As electronic evidence continues to play a very important role in nearly every criminal investigation, becoming accredited is more critical than ever.

I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Forensic Image Clarification

I can’t count the number of times I’ve been handed a horrible surveillance photograph, or an extremely grainy video of an armed robbery, and was expected to use it as evidence to solve a crime. I’d have been better off taking a page from a mug shot book and tossing a dart at it. The guy’s photo it stuck, well, he’d have to be the crook of the day.

Fortunately, technology exists to clean up and clarify those awful images. Products such as Ocean System’s dTective ClearID v. 20 system are a wonderful addition to any forensic investigator’s toolbox. Clear ID is actually a forensic plugin for Adobe Photoshop that’s nondestructive to the original piece of evidence.

dTective Clear ID can be used to enhance any video from any souce and is used by many law enforcement agencies across the country, such as the FBI, CIA,  DEA, and many local departments.

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Fox 9 News Report, Anoka County Sheriff’s Office

Detective Larry Johnson demultiplexes video to solve a robbery.

…The FBI, HCA and the Minneapolis Police Department all use this new technology…

Ohio Organized Crime, Columbus, 10TV News

Ohio University Campus, Rapist Captured Using ATM Video

dVeloper® frame averaging used to clarify the licence plate in only

7 minutes.  With this evidence, the suspect took a plea deal. He is now

serving 30 years behind bars.

Detective Josh Hudson, “most of the people don’t want to contest the video evidence because it speaks for itself… It doesn’t lie.”

Last year they worked over 500 cases.

* Thanks to Ocean Systems