LAB FINGERS GUILTY DRUG

Analysis: An integral role in the city's push to clear a backlog of
criminal cases is played by the police crime lab, where drugs confiscated
in up to 65 cases are tested daily.

Jawad Abdullah's office is a window into Baltimore's thriving illicit drug
trade. Literally.

In front of his desk on the 10th floor of Baltimore police headquarters on
East Fayette Street, a row of eight-foot windows frames the drug-riddled
streets of East Baltimore. Abdullah carefully drops white powder found just
11 blocks away into tubes to test them for cocaine and heroin.

"See the bright blue color?" Abdullah asks, pointing to a small dish in
which he has combined the powder with a chemical. "This is cocaine."

More tests need to be done before the chemist can have court-worthy proof.
How quickly those tests can be performed is critical to the new plan for
speedier justice in Baltimore.

The reform plan, which began a monthlong trial period on Aug 1., aims to
dispose of as many as 50 percent of all minor cases - mainly drug
possession - within 24 hours.

Suspected drugs will have to be analyzed within a matter of hours, instead
of the week it takes now. Prosecutors need those results to take a case to
court or to encourage a defendant to plead guilty as quickly as possible.

"There is no way the defense attorney is going to allow their client to
admit to something without knowing what it is," said John H. Lewin Jr.,
co-chair of the committee steering reform of the city courts. "There is no
way the prosecutor will accept something which is really a guess on their
part. The judge needs to know, too. It wouldn't matter if this were such a
small number of cases that come before the court, but these are the
majority of the cases ."

To accomplish the rapid turnaround, city police are planning to hire five
more chemists within the next few months.

The new chemists, who will bring the total to 20, will work a night shift
so the drug analysis unit can be operational almost 24 hours a day.

Already the chemists are testing drugs at a rapid clip. Last year, city
chemists analyzed about 27,000 cases-four times the number tested by New
Orleans police and 45 percent more than Philadelphia police according to a
survey done by Baltimore's drug unit.

Each city chemist handles about 1800 cases a year, the survey shows, while
other chemists in different states take on about 700 apiece.

Edgar F. Koch, director of Baltimore's crime lab, estimates the lab will be
testing about 65 cases every night under the new plan. Each sample can take
up to three hours to test.

"We'll have an answer for the state's attorney before she goes to court,"
Koch said.

Delicate work

Police considered using robots for the testing instead of hiring more
chemists. They decided it's quicker to have people conduct the tests
because so much delicate work is required.

The drug analysis unit of the city crime lab is an oddly clinical and
sanitary scene in the midst of the out-of-control drug problem on the streets.

On Abdullah's desk are dozens of petri dishes, a pile of evidence bags and
glass jars filled with chemicals. Perched on a stool in his white lab coat,
he has samples from 12 cases in various stages of testing.

Abdullah, 45, who has degrees in civil engineering and chemistry, is
examining yellowish-brown rocks seized from a suspected drug dealer on
Rutland Avenue. He weighs the rocks - 19 grams - and then rolls one of them
out of a red-top vial, crushes it and puts tiny bits into petri dishes.

Next, he drops a series of six chemicals into the dishes to figure out what
the substance most likely is.

"This could be crack. This could be cocaine. This could be nothing," says
Abdullah's boss, Shiv Soni, manager of the drug analysis unit.

Color tests

One chemical turns crack and heroin light blue and pure cocaine bright
blue. Another chemical has no effect on crack or cocaine but turns heroin
purple. Another chemical turns heroin green but has little effect on others.

The different chemicals are necessary because some drugs, such as heroin
and morphine, have similar characteristics but the color tests help
distinguish them.

Forty-five percent of the drugs that come into the lab are cocaine or
crack, Soni says. Thirty percent are heroin and 15 percent are marijuana.
The rest are other drugs, such as amphetamines or "burn," fake drugs sold
by street dealers.

After the color test, the contents of the red-top vials appear to be
cocaine. Abdullah prepares to confirm his preliminary findings. Bits of the
drugs are placed in a vial with ethanol alcohol, and put into a series of
scientific instruments which break down the components of the chemical.

The instruments vaporize the substance to separate the elements and give
chemists a detailed picture of what it is in the white powder.

An hour later, Abdullah's drugs come back as 90 percent cocaine. Koch said
that concentration means the person caught with it is likely a dealer and
was preparing to cut the substance with something else, like baking soda.

That will be critical information for the prosecutor to determine how the
case should be charged and how involved the defendant is in the drug world,
Koch said. It is the scientists' documentation of exactly what kinds of
drugs are being bought and sold, right under their windows.

Said Koch: "This is the fingerprint of that drug."