When it comes to solving crimes, decoding mysteries and keeping citizens safe, Abby Sciuto of the popular NCIS television series has nothing on Savannah’s own gang of forensic scientists at the new U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) laboratory on Chatham Parkway.
They have done everything from pulling a bullet out of a dead alligator to see if it matched a suspect’s gun to etching out the serial number that’s been filed off a weapon.
They analyze designer drugs for their exact chemical makeup and test garlic to determine its country of origin. They manufacture fake narcotics for use in sting operations and analyze imported toys for lead paint content.
“Working in here is like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates — we never know what we’re going to get,” said lab director Carson Watts, a 42-year veteran scientist who clearly enjoys his work.
“We’ve examined money from Miami that we determined was laundered — literally — by finding the chemical markers of the laundry detergent. We identify everything from tire tread imprints to white powder.
“Then there was the perfectly ordinary looking picture frame that turned out to be made of heroin …”
One of only eight full-service analytical labs operated around the country by CBP’s Laboratories and Scientific Services Division, the Savannah facility supports forensic crime scene investigation, weapons of mass destruction interdiction and trade enforcement.
Established in 1918 almost exclusively to analyze raw sugar imported by the Savannah Sugar Refinery, the Savannah lab was once little more than a one-room “sugar operation” in the Customs House downtown.
In June, the Department of Homeland Security facility moved into its new home, an imposing 35,000-square-foot building on Savannah’s west side, where it serves an alphabet soup of federal agencies as well as local law enforcement and a geographical area stretching from Key West, Fla., up to Pennsylvania.
As the frontline border security agency, CBP’s first priority is to prevent terrorists or terrorist weapons from entering the country, said Lisa Beth Brown, Savannah Port Director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Its efforts also include enforcing immigration, customs, trade, agricultural and other laws, she said.
At the country’s fourth largest port, much of that centers on trade, Brown said, as her agency is tasked with ensuring that products coming into the country are both safe for consumption and comply with federal regulations.
“We are there to ensure the products that come into our port are, in essence, what they claim to be,” she said. “We couldn’t do that without our lab and the cooperation of all our partners, from Food and Drug to the USDA and the DEA.”
Nationally, the CBP manages 329 ports of entry out of 20 field offices. Agents in these offices protect more than 5,000 miles of border with Canada, 1,900 miles of border with Mexico and 95,000 miles of shoreline.
On a typical day, the CBP processes more than 65,000 truck, rail and sea containers across the country and 250,000-plus incoming privately owned vehicles, seizing nearly 14,000 pounds of drugs and $346,000 in undeclared or illicit currency.
Back at the Savannah lab, a full-time staff of 30, most of them forensic scientists, are working away in a number of arenas.
In one lab, perfumes are tested to determine whether they are, in fact, the real thing.
“Perfume is something that is counterfeited almost as soon as a new fragrance comes out,” Watts said. “Counterfeits being sold as the real thing are infringing on a company’s trademark.”
But it can be more than that, Brown said.
“A counterfeit product may contain harmful substances, things you wouldn’t want on your skin or even in your home,” she said.
High-tech state-of-the-art equipment, things with names like liquid chromatograph mass spectrometer — and price tags to match — have replaced the “touch, smell and taste” methods of old, Watts said.
He recalled that determining whether sardines were smoked was definitely not his favorite memory.
In another section of the lab, champagne is tested by inserting a probe to determine the pressure against the cork, while in the textile lab Lynn Taylor Smith evaluates the content of everything from fabric to wood to the authenticity — and legal status — of animal skin.
One of the things Smith deals with is Lycra, which is DuPont’s trademark for spandex,” Watts said. “So many other companies began calling their spandex products Lycra that DuPont started putting a marker in their product to show that it was, in fact, legitimate Lycra.”
As it has been for nearly 100 years, sugar testing remains an important responsibility of the lab.
“When we say sugar, we’re almost always talking sucrose and one of our jobs is to determine the sucrose content in foods, which we do with a polarized light process,” said scientist Ray Burke.
Much of the testing is done to determine tariffs, which can vary widely depending on the content, country of origin and other factors of the product, Watts said, adding this keeps the playing field level and protects U.S. businesses.
Take garlic for instance.
“Most of the garlic produced in the U.S. is grown in California,” he said. “But we have had instances of that industry being threatened by outside countries doing what is called ‘dumping’ or flooding a market with product below market price in order to push the competitor out of business.
“There are huge ‘anti-dumping’ duties designed to discourage this. But first, we have to prove a country is doing that.”
In addition to protecting U.S. business interests, testing also centers on food safety.
Watts recalled the instance several years ago of melamine in pet foods imported from China resulting in a number of animal deaths.
“Then it started showing up in infant formula,” he said. “We did a huge amount of testing revolving around that.”
Brown calls the lab and others like it the consumer’s “first line of defense.”
“They help us stay one step ahead of the things that are trending,” she said. “Things like the ‘bath salts’ that started showing up in convenience stores and synthetic THC. And, of course, designer drugs are huge and constantly changing.”
Combine that with good communication among agencies and solid law enforcement techniques, and the good guys have more than a leg up, she said.
“And when we win, the consumer wins.”
FAST FACTS
About the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Savannah lab
• Its mission is to provide scientific/forensic support, including mobile on-site support, to CBP officers, border patrol agents and other government agencies with regard to investigation and interdiction of weapons of mass destruction; and to produce timely and effective laboratory reports and crime scene documentation supporting CBP trade compliance and law enforcement missions.
• Located at 1425 Chatham Parkway, the new facility cost $25 million to build and millions more to equip. At least one single piece of equipment cost $750,000.
• Trade-based activities include consumer product and food safety analyses, country of origin determinations, intellectual property rights enforcement, pharmaceutical analysis and identification, product analysis and mobile operations.
• Forensic activities include controlled substance analysis, pseudo narcotic production, narcotic field test kit training and support, forensic material analysis, digital forensics, latent fingerprint processing, comparison and identification and the documentation, collection and preservation of evidence at crime scenes.
• Anti-terrorism activities include chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and explosive detection and identification, mobile operations and evaluation of new field technology and instrumentation.