Director of DC s Embattled Crime Lab Resigns, Sources Say nbcwashington.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nbcwashington.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
A real threat to public safety | Authorities worry about illegal 3D-printed guns
3D printers can make toys, tools, even artificial limbs for those in need. But there are now concerns about more nefarious items like illegal 3D-printed guns. Author: Laura Geller, Becca Knier (WUSA 9) Published: 10:31 AM EDT May 13, 2021 Updated: 10:31 AM EDT May 13, 2021
WASHINGTON Inside a small apartment last year in West Virginia, prosecutors said Timothy John Watson operated an online retailer named Portable Wall Hanger. But they say it was just a front, and Watson was actually selling machine gun conversion devices, which allow rifles to fire multiple
shots with just one press of the trigger.
. WASHINGTON The nation dramatically stepped up its surveillance for coronavirus variants in recent weeks, but experts say there s much further to go if the Washington region and the rest of the country wants to stay ahead of new and potentially dangerous versions of the virus. Conducting the genetic sequencing to detect for variants is far more expensive, time-consuming and sophisticated than testing whether people have contracted the coronavirus, leading to a patchwork system where some states aggressively seek out variants and others lag behind. There are definitely states where they really champion this, said Duncan MacCannell, chief science officer for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention s Office of Advanced Molecular Detection. But, you know, there s also a lot of blanks (on the map), dark spots, places where we just don t have regular sequence data.
As part of the criminal investigation, investigators with the D.C. Inspector General’s Office have already examined emails, chain of custody reports, evidence examination reports and interviewed at least seven employees at the lab.
The D.C. crime lab has been under a criminal investigation since early December. The lab has been told to stop examining evidence for 30 days.
“It creates severe headaches for frankly the Metropolitan Police Department, the citizens of the District of Columbia, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the corporation counsel I guess we call them the Office of the Attorney General now,” said Deborah Sines, who spent years as a prosecutor for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.