The Plymouth County Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) predated M.G.L. chapters 148 and 149, Acts of 1950, that codified the unit in the Commonwealth. Hanover Police Chief Howard Levings started BCI at a time when the FBI began formalizing “Bureau of Investigation” models throughout the country. Plymouth County BCI went on to compile the largest inventory of latent prints in Massachusetts. Under the leadership of Sheriff Peter Flynn and a movement by the Legislature to regionalize public safety support, the BCI unit became a division of the Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office. In the early 1990s, BCI modernized information sharing of latent prints and installed the latest technology, AFIS (Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System). AFIS is a national fingerprint and criminal history system maintained by the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division. Through a federal grant, the Sheriff’s office was able to install the AFIS technology in every Plymouth County police department. Today, BCI assists our local law enforcement partners by processing crime scenes and conducting analysis of evidence through both the latent print and digital forensic laboratories. The latent print lab is certified and recognized by the coveted national accreditation of ANAB, one of only five labs in the Commonwealth with this accreditation.
BCI handles the crime scene process from investigation to preparation, analysis and identification. DNA testing of hair and blood samples are prepared and sent off-site for testing while the BCI laboratory in Plymouth processes and analyzes fingerprints and other evidence.
Accreditation Notice:
The Plymouth County Sheriff’s Office Bureau of Criminal Investigation is accredited as a forensic testing laboratory by ANAB to ISO/IEC 17025 for specific forensic disciplines listed in our published Scope of Accreditation, which can be found by following the Accreditation Information link above. Some services we provide fall outside our accredited scope and are not considered accredited services.
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