A Return to Form: Rhode Island Crime Lab Brings Firearms Analysis Back In-House
The Rhode Island State Crime Laboratory is officially turning a page after a turbulent period for its forensic analysis section. The State Crime Laboratory Commission recently gave its unanimous blessing to a new action plan that will see firearms toolmark testing largely return to the lab’s own examiners, ending a temporary but costly reliance on outside contractors.
Lab Director Dennis Hilliard presented the plan, which signals a critical step in rebuilding the facility’s staff and restoring public confidence in its work. Starting on April 1, the Rhode Island State Crime Lab on the University of Rhode Island’s Kingston campus will begin ramping its in-house operations back up.
The Road to Outsourcing
For those following the story, the shift to external labs was not a matter of choice. The state’s crime lab temporarily suspended toolmark testing back in August 2024 following a troubling discovery. Discrepancies were found in test results related to a pistol seized as evidence in a 2021 Pawtucket murder case. Officials found that cartridge casings had been incorrectly flagged as matching a different firearm in the possession of the Boston Police Department.
This fallout quickly led to a crisis for the lab’s firearms section. The three technicians responsible for the toolmark testing left their jobs, forcing the lab to completely suspend its operations in that area and send evidence out to third-party facilities in other states.
Since November 2024, the lab has used a consulting group and other labs in Texas and New Hampshire to handle the workload. While this outsourcing eliminated case backlogs, it came with a significant price tag: the lab has paid over $394,000 to these contractors for testing and verification, a figure that is still less than the annual salary and benefits budget for the three departed employees.
A New Era of Verification
The newly approved plan is designed to be a soft launch, emphasizing quality control and a dual-review process to prevent any recurrence of past errors. Toolmarks are the unique, microscopic impressions left on cartridges or shells when they are fired, and examiners use this evidence to link a shell casing to a specific firearm.
Under the new protocol, the lab will not immediately go back to a completely in-house system. Instead, it will initially send 15% of all cases out for third-party verification. That percentage will then gradually scale back to a permanent 5% level, ensuring an ongoing layer of external quality assurance. As Director Hilliard noted to the commissioners, “We won’t go back to zero percent.”
Firearm examiners at the lab also utilize the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network or NIBIN. This digital database of images, which catalogs markings on cartridge cases, is an invaluable tool for linking crimes that might otherwise appear unconnected. The integration of NIBIN with the newly restructured in-house capabilities is expected to be a major boost to law enforcement in the Ocean State.
The unanimous approval represents a major vote of confidence in the lab’s efforts to staff up and institute new, stricter protocols. With an April 1 start date on the horizon, Rhode Island is poised to have its critical firearms forensic testing capability firmly back under its own roof, but with a new commitment to external review that promises to keep standards high.
