NEW DRUG LAB OPENS ON USCB CAMPUS

Sheriff's Office, School Team Up To Create Facility

BLUFFTON -- In Sgt. Renita Berry's old laboratory, the Beaufort County
Sheriff's Office chemist could stand in the middle of the room and touch
every piece of equipment.

Looking around her spacious new laboratory Thursday in the University of
South Carolina Beaufort's south campus Science and Technology building, she
said, "Here, there's more room to grow, to do your job."

Berry's job is to analyze suspected illegal drugs. That's an important task
because to take someone found with drugs to court, it's not enough for an
officer to identify the drugs by sight.

"For court purposes, you have to have an actual analysis," said Berry,
whose new laboratory opened April 25. The public got its first look at it
Thursday.

Until several years ago, Beaufort County sent all suspected drugs to
Columbia for analysis by the State Law Enforcement Division. That left the
Sheriff's Office with a backlog of about 300 cases, many of which were two
and three years old, Sheriff P.J. Tanner said Thursday.

In 2001, Tanner began to build the Sheriff's Office's own drug analysis
laboratory with the help of state and federal grants. The lab opened in
March 2002, and the backlog disappeared. Today, he has a guaranteed 30-day
turnaround for analysis, he said. That way lab results always are available
when the grand jury meets.

Although the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office operates the drug laboratory,
it is a regional facility used by all law enforcement agencies in the
county, as well as Jasper, Hampton and Colleton counties, Tanner said.
Throughout the region, the number of cases that require drug analysis is
growing. Berry said she worked on about 450 cases last year.

Until last month, the laboratory was a converted photographic darkroom in
the department's Beaufort offices. The space, which still is being used for
marijuana testing, was so small, some of the equipment purchased for the
lab had not been unpacked because there was nowhere to put it.

When the new university campus opened last August, Chancellor Jane Upshaw
approached the Sheriff's Office about a possible substation on campus.
Tanner agreed to the substation and, during conversations with Upshaw, hit
upon the idea of relocating the Sheriff's Office drug lab as well, he said.

The university's facilities, which it is providing free of charge, are
top-notch, Tanner said. "It's absolutely unbelievable to be able to operate
here."

The new lab does not have anymore equipment than the old lab yet, but
Tanner said he sees the new lab as a steppingstone to bigger and better
things. Soon, he hopes to be able to begin expanding the Sheriff's Office's
capacity for forensic analysis. For instance, trace analysis would allow
the office to match a fiber found on a victim to a suspect's car or home,
and ballistic analysis would allow the office to analyze such things as the
trajectory of bullets. Eventually, he would like to have the capacity to
analyze DNA as well.

"We're keeping an eye on federal and state grants," he said. His goal is
make the Sheriff's Office totally self-sufficient for all laboratory work.

"Law enforcement today is more about scientific analysis than it ever has
been," the sheriff said. The new laboratory offers the "area and the
technology we need to grow."