Secretary, would you please call the roll?

Yes, Madam Chair.

I will begin the roll call now.

Chairwoman Cohen.

Here.

Vice Chair Baird?

Here.

Director Vasquez.

Director Hilder.

Director Silverman.

Director Corrales.

Here.

Director U.

Here.

Director Mazal.

Director Huff.

Here.

Director Clues?

Here.

And that concludes the roll call.

We do have a quorum.

Madam Chair, you may continue.

Thank you.

I'd like to proceed to agenda item three.

And I want to report that I did want to report on our time at City Council from earlier this week, which was really a lot of fun.

For those of you who are not able to attend.

So thank you for providing us with that opportunity.

We also are approaching our last board meeting of the year, which is in November.

We'd love for everyone to attend the final meeting, and we do anticipate some budgetary items that will be brought before the board for consideration.

So we'd appreciate everyone making an extra effort to be here.

Are there any questions or additional thoughts?

Okay.

That concludes the chair's report.

Now we'll proceed to item four.

At this time we'll open the floor for public comment and invite any member of the public that wishes to speak to come to the podium and address the board.

We ask all speakers to sign in at the front of the room.

So we are aware of your presence and that all comments be limited to three minutes.

You may speak on any matter concerning the board and HFSC.

At this time, do we have anyone in the audience who has signed up for public comment?

Doesn't appear to be anyone.

Seeing no members of the public of our audience today.

We've s who've signed up for comment, I'll close the public comment period.

Public comment period is closed.

So now consider meeting minutes from the July 28th, 2025 special board meeting.

Does anyone have corrections or additions to the minutes as presented?

Okay.

At this time, we'll conduct a voice vote to approve the minutes.

May I have a motion?

So moved.

Thank you.

Second to approve the minutes.

Thank you.

Did you get that, Madam Secretary?

Okay.

Any discussion.

Please unmute your mics at this time for a vote, a voice vote.

All in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no.

The motion carries and passes unanimously.

Moving swiftly along.

Yeah, until you get to meet.

Members' agenda item seven has been pulled.

What?

Oh, this comes next.

Sorry about that.

Report from Dr.

Stout.

Sorry about that, Peter.

I was looking down the keep it.

Well, you just said you're long, so I was trying to skip over you.

I guess we'll have to acknowledge them.

Report from Dr.

Peter Stout, President and CEO, including an overview of operations and technical updates and other corporate business items.

Dr.

Stout.

Good morning, Neil.

All right.

Get the microphone in the right place here.

So yeah.

The loading dock is done right now.

Crime scene and client services are working through how best to coordinate access with the building to the loading dock.

And all the basement permits are done.

Actually, we are expecting much of the basement construction to be complete by the end of September.

So they're making good progress on things.

But I I think here probably by the end of the year we will have everything pretty well settled, installed, dealt with the electrical, and then I can just look at plumbing.

Um but so you've got just a little bit of an idea.

Um they're not terribly exciting pictures of construction because they're big open spaces that are just going to be filled with uh shelving, but just so you've got a bit of a flavor of our big open spaces that will be filled with shelving and freezers.

Um, you know, it's it's storage.

It's not pretty, but it's very functional.

I think it will serve the purposes quite well.

Any questions on any of the construction stuff?

All right.

Um we've put this in there for a while now, just of the three biggest backlogs that most people are the most concerned of.

Uh the one on the left there is forensic biology, and you can see the bulge in the green and the orange lines.

We expected that, and that is the chiogen effect.

Um that is the from chiogen, the manufacturer error that occurred that up ended the whole country.

Um we said in Germany without the company itself is is German.

Yeah.

Um, but that the the reagent that they made, if you remember, we've talked about that reagent, the little cassettes that we use for extraction purification of DNA.

Um, and our outsourcing lab uses the same technology.

So that bulge really represents the delays that we had in working with the outsourcing laboratory to ensure that we had appropriate controls in place to catch this.

If it went further, we paused testing for a little while.

And that's gone basically exactly as we were predicting the increase in turnaround times and now the decrease in turnaround times as everything's gotten back going.

So we're we're basically back to about that 90-day required turnaround time.

Um, but that's what that bulge is in the turnaround times.

Firearms just keeps crawling up.

Um I'm gonna talk more specifically about firearms here and give you just a refresher of some history around firearms to explain that one.

And C's drugs is now making steady progress down.

We've had analysts that we've gotten signed off, and it is is again exactly what we expected to have happen as those analysts have gotten into production.

Any questions there so far?

Yes, ma'am.

Is you going to unpack that?

Oh, just shoot me on hemp.

Um yeah, I've got a slide at the end because yes, there is the potential with THC to continue.

Well, it will continue to influence where we're at, because really there is no resolution.

Um I tucked this one in here.

We've talked about the annual performance stuff because my annual performance is one of the agenda items.

I just wanted to put this back on here so that you had a refresher of where we were at.

And I also wanted to say, you know, we set the corporate level goals based around knowing what our capacity and staffing is currently.

So, you know, I could see the potential for people to go, hey, wait a second.

You're rating yourself pretty darn good when you still have some big backlogs.

Yes.

But the staff are doing exactly what we expect them to do.

In fact, they are doing far more than we expect them to do.

This is representative of the gap between what is still needed to actually meet the demands of the system and what we can expect of staff.

Um so from the goals that we had, we had the monthly one-on-ones.

They did those.

We're actually shifting that now to a section level goal, and we've got different and we've already talked about those approved the new goals for the this next evaluation year.

Um the next two were around production goals and quality goals.

We had the one uh quality goal that wasn't met in actually IT, it was an audit goal that they didn't meet for quality goal in IT, and so that was the 13 of 14 sections.

And then our voluntary turnover rate, I think we really need to highlight that one because post-COVID, I think you remember in COVID, our voluntary turnover rate ranged upwards of about 20% at probably the most painful points, and now we're back to something that looks more like pre-COVID at about 9%.

So that was really nice to see, and this I think there's a lot that we can attribute to our new HR director who's been with us a little bit more than a year now, Ty um has done some marvelous work for us there.

Any questions on that part?

All right.

So a little bit of a history lesson here, just so you've got because we that firearms backlog is the single biggest pain point.

Um I have found that it has resonated with a lot of legislators this last session to point out in Texas, there are 72 licensed firearms examiners in the entire state.

72.

Uh for just one little perspective in there, New York PD, which basically does uh the firearms work for Manhattan.

Um, and they do work differently than we do.

So it's not exactly an apples to apples comparison, but they have 70 firearms personnel in just Manhattan.

The entire state of Texas has 72.

This is a problem all across the state for firearms.

But there are a lot of parts that go into this.

Uh and we put up there the the number of subpoenas, and so we were talking about this in about 2021, 2022.

Just so we got kind of some historical perspective of where we started trying to get people to understand what was going on.

2020, the fun year of COVID, basically the courts stopped from the perspective that we could see.

I know there are plenty of people that will say the courts kept processing stuff, they kept doing things, yes, but from what we saw of trying cases that involved forensic evidence, calling our people to court to testify and prosecuting cases that way.

The courts just stopped in 2020.

So that built up an enormous mind-boggling backlog in the courts starting in 2020, and that was stacked on top of the backlog that happened from Harvey because the courthouse was destroyed in Harvey.

So in 2022, the courts started back up, and we saw a major increase in the number of subpoenas and the demand for our work in court.

And you probably remember some of these headlines that were in about 2023, and that one I use regularly because I love that chart there.

And if you look at that chart, it stretches from 2017 out to 2023.

And so we were talking about this one in 2023.

But a point out on there, in comparison to the timelines of how long it took a case to get to trial, that was about 24-ish months in 2015 to 2017.

Um, our turnaround times in firearms at that point was less than 30 days for all of that stretch.

In C's drugs, it was about seven days, and we were getting about 2,000 to 2500 subpoenas.

Harvey happened in 17.

The courts started getting badly backlogged.

The the court turnaround time jumps up to about 34 months.

Our turnaround firearms was still of less than 30 days.

We were still less than about seven days in C's drugs, and we were still getting about 2500 subpoenas.

We could see that this was gonna break starting in about 2019 to 2020.

So we started talking with the city that we are going to need to add capacity in firearms because we know it is going to take us at least two years to train any capacity that we add there.

And you could see where the two lines were headed.

So you you could see this train coming.

And in 2020, we started seeing our firearms turnaround time was creeping up over a month.

Seized drugs was still low, but like I say, in 2020, we had basically no subpoenas.

By 2022 and 2023, firearms turnaround time was up about nine months.

C's drugs was up about three and a half months.

I also point out in that that the court turnaround time was about 45 months.

So we were not the majority of the timeline.

Yeah, yeah, we contributed to it, but we weren't the entire reason of it.

And I think out of this pointing out and making sure people understand, our backlog didn't predicate the court backlog.

The court backlog predicated our backlog.

Yes, our backlogs contribute to the court, no question.

Can't deny that.

But the court's backlog influence us probably more than our backlog influenced the court.

So in 2022, um, started trying to explain all of this stuff to the city.

So this is under uh Mayor Turner's administration, and you know, this is what we were telling them.

At that point, we were about a year backlogged, which no, don't like that.

Uh, but the courts were about two years backlogged.

And you could see where these two lines were going to cross in about another year where the court's backlog was going to catch up to us, and we were going to start to be the backlog.

Um you you could see that coming.

So we were trying to help people understand that through COVID, you know, the DA's office lost people hand over fist, like everybody did.

So we were dealing with highly inexperienced ADAs.

They struggled managing their courtroom, which then left us with analysts sitting over at court far more.

Well, if they're sitting at court, they're not doing work.

Um they were inexperienced.

I mean, it's it's not that they weren't trying to do things, it's not that they were incompetent or anything like that.

They just didn't have the experience.

Introducing trying cases with forensic evidence is complex, it is difficult, it requires a lot of knowledge and nuance, and they just didn't have it.

So that was feeding back into us and creating issues.

And by and large, defense didn't stop through COVID.

So they became a lot more experienced and a lot more proficient.

So that combination started creating a lot more pressure on us.

Uh this was part of what we were talking about with the mayor's administration in our budgeting cycle in 2022 ish, and you can see the jump in turnaround times from pre-COVID.

So the first column there that says turnaround time pre-COVID to turnaround time post-COVID, CSU went up 200%, firearms went up 100%, digital multimedia jumped nearly 500%, seized drugs jumped 230%.

Yeah, COVID was rough on us.

COVID was rough on everybody.

If you look where we're at now, those same disciplines.

So that the blue box there, just so you've got a perspective of where we're at now, CSU is back down where we would expect about 20 23 days.

Firearms, yes, we've been talking about firearms for years.

They're roughly 270 days now.

Digital multimedia back down to about 36 days.

Seize drugs has come down.

You we've been talking about what's behind C's drugs in there.

Uh drug toxicology has improved.

We still have work to do in drug toxicology and latent parents back down to about 70 days.

So we've made a lot of progress in a lot of places, but firearms we knew was a very long arc to train.

So when we look at things that we were asking about for budget back there, we've been asking after CSU and expansions in CSU for quite some time.

Um firearms we were trying to add.

And we we I can't say I fault the city.

I mean, the city struggles, and I do not envy anybody in finance or the mayor's office trying to make these decisions of what comes first, what goes second.

But the choice at that point was to not fund that stuff.

So the die was set in about 2022 for where we're at right now.

So much so that if you look, so this was just looking at budgets and the budgets we requested versus the budgets that we actually had funded across the last what is that, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, almost ten years.

Um, and you can see for about four years in there is a pretty flat budget.

I I I get it.

And actually the increase in budget from let's see, what are those uh about 2021 to 2024 were mostly what we're remembered the ARPA dollars, the Recovery Act dollars.

So marvelous.

We we were able to use a lot of that, really appreciate the support with that.

But that's a one-time funding kind of thing, not a recurrent funding.

So, yes, it helped us, but we also knew that there was an end to that.

Um you can also kind of see a shift in the strategy of how we have discussed budget with the mayor's office that for about four years there in the Turner administration, the way we would go about it is discuss, agree a budget.

That's the budget that the board would pass rather than trying to make it more clear of the needs of the organization, and there's the budget that the board passes to then have an additional discussion with the mayor's office and understand we're gonna come back with something ultimately less, but so it is clearer what the needs are and where the risks are.

And we shifted back to that strategy really at the end of Turner's administration and with the Whitmeyer administration.

But the first real increases we have had in budget have been under the Whitmire administration.

So again, the issues, particularly in firearms, that course was set in 2021.

In fact, this was uh a model that we used in 2021 that we were calculating we would see a backlogs upwards of about 700 backlog requests if nothing changed.

Now, the orange bars in there are uh grabbed a few dates of our actual backlog numbers, and it's pretty striking how closely we fit our model, and the difference is the fact that we moved some positions around that became available in other sections.

So we basically cannibalized resources out of other places knowing that firearms was a sensitivity, and so we have mitigated that backlog sum, but it was still gonna happen.

And now it is also going to take years to clear it because yeah, we've got oh Amy, and we might have to help me out with this.

We've got what, seven in training now?

Five.

I keep losing track.

Yeah, four.

We have four.

Yes, please.

Amy Castillo, the chief operations officer.

We have four in training.

We have five positions that we're going to post for that will all go in training, and then we have four Nyben technicians in training.

So all of those people are in training and firearms.

We have five full-time examiners, um, but three of those have to be pulled to help with all that training.

So we are, and our goal is to have 13 firearms examiners.

So to put in perspective, the challenge we're dealing with is we need 13 and we have two full-time.

Um if we don't pull those three to help train, though, we're never gonna get these trainings through.

Um, we are with our current budget increase, the city did give us money to bring in external training.

So currently we're actually working through a request for proposals to have help training those next five so that we can get them.

But we're still, I would say, at least six months away from the current examiners um contributing, and then we're gonna have another two years when those five come in to get them ready.

So keep in mind, we need to have realistic expectations of brand new examiners.

When they're signed off, they're not functioning like somebody who's been doing this for five to ten years.

They're doing it like somebody who's just been signed off.

And and we do have the positions posted already in case any of those 72 in Texas, um, if somebody experienced wanted to come.

So we're trying to tackle it from every angle to where we have those posted.

But if we don't aren't able to recruit somebody before we have this RFP done, then we'll switch it all over to um trainees to come in and start getting trained.

Thanks, Amy.

I appreciate it.

Are people just shooting each other more?

And we have more casing.

Well, Houston's a Houston's a pretty shooty place.

Um we we we like to we like to shoot at stuff.

Uh actually the homicide rate in Houston is down this year over last year, as it is almost everywhere in the country.

I think Milwaukee and Fort Worth are the only two major cities where there's been an increase in homicide.

But it's still there's there is a lot of people getting holes poked in with a gun.

Okay.

And the other way I try to explain this in a lot of different environments is everywhere in the country, the entire system, the courts in general, are struggling to keep up with pro adjudicating crimes against person.

And the primary way that somebody gets a hole poked in them in this country is with a gun.

So firearms evidence is a critical piece of evidence in the cases that the courts are currently trying to try and will be for years.

Uh gun control, right?

We had gun control, and we didn't, and it would be interesting to see what those numbers look like.

It's you also have to keep in mind, and I I tell a lot of different groups this to point out.

There are probably something north of 450 million firearms in private hands in this country.

There are more guns in this country than there are people.

I mean, we're we are we are not putting that genie back in a bottle.

But I also try to point out to people 2022 numbers on gunshot wound deaths, which I think are the current most current numbers I've been able to find.

56% of those gunshot wound deaths are suicides.

Most people don't think about it that way.

56% are suicides.

So it's really easy to think about this that more shooting is happening, more of these things.

It's just it is just a lot, period.

Um I'm not sure we really a lot of violent crime is down now compared to particularly like back in the 80s and 90s.

I mean, Houston's homicides in the 80s and 90s, I think we're up around six or seven hundred homicides a year.

We're probably gonna top out this year somewhere around 300.

Peter, I have a question.

When you're talking about the staffing.

Um and you say it'll take a year or two years generally to bring them up.

Uh who are you hiring?

Are these people just out of university and they've never touched any of this?

Or are you trying to hire people that are working in other forensics science centers?

I mean, yes, we're trying to hire anybody we can get hold of.

But who have no, but but people who have no training at all in what it is they're being trained for.

So basically, our goal, especially in firearms right now, would be to find somebody experienced.

We're just not having luck doing that, getting people to move.

Um, if we were able to find that, we estimate it would take about six months.

And that six months then consists of them coming in, learning our quality systems, learning our laboratory information management systems, how we report, how we document, um, that's why it would still take that long for them to be signed off to do casework at HFSC.

We don't have good luck with that.

So then the people we are bringing in are straight out of college.

Um and so they haven't had firearms experience, and firearms in particular is very challenging because there's not a college course they could have taken to start learning it.

And when they come in, not only do they have to learn the examination part of it, which actually comes later in training, they also have to learn all about guns, right?

And it's very similar to digital multimedia where we say, yes, you're an analyst, but you're also a cell phone repair person at this point.

And those technologies and what comes through our door change every day.

And so we're having to also train them to be able to win these guns come in from crimes, not from a store, um, how to deal with all of that and how to know what to do when they shouldn't do something with that gun.

So that's where it's like the the program grows very quickly in time when you look at them having to learn all that and then having to learn comparisons and something in firearms, and I'm gonna use another discipline now, not to do in Latin Prince, is there is a component of doing those comparisons that cannot be replicated, other than you doing it.

And and that is a challenge because then we need to find the time once we're ready to have them start doing mock casework, that they just have time at the scope.

Um, and nothing can replace that.

And so that also adds challenge because we may say two years and they may get on in a year and nine months, and we may see you need more time.

Um we we and we can't skip that piece if we see that they need more time.

And so that's why it's particularly challenging, I would say, in firearms.

So if if somebody graduates from a university is a theater major, and you know, it looks around, there's not a lot of jobs, but they've always wanted to work in this field, and there's a job opening, they apply, they are without any knowledge of what it is we do, but we will train them then.

Um I would say not a theater major.

A chemistry major.

Right.

It's not a chemistry, some kind of science major, yes.

We would they would come in, but we do need that we are requiring more in firearms now, regardless.

They need the science major, but because of licensing, right?

They need statistics.

There are some college components that they need to come in with.

It's just that like now you're learning actually firearms examination.

And it it's one of the more challenging areas because biology and chemistry, yes, there's a forensic component of it that is very challenging, but you still learned biology and chemistry in college.

Firearms, there is no college course for firearms examination.

There is now one firearms program at Virginia Commonwealth University that just started last year.

Um that's a that's a college program specifically designed to try and create firearms examiners.

Uh Ron Smith and Associates has just launched on the commercial side of program.

That's one we're talking with about potentially using them.

Another perspective on this, I try to point out to lots of people is the Association of Firemen Toolmark Examiners, which is the primary professional organization of firearms examiners, estimates there are a thousand certified firearms examiners on the planet.

I was gonna ask that this isn't hit your hit your microphone to the lack of staffing is not a budgeting issue, it's a recruitment issue.

The lack of staffing is not a budgeting issue.

It's a recruitment issue.

It is a recruit, it's it is a nationwide recruiting issue because the demand for firearms examiners is enormous and they just don't exist.

But I would like to add because of that, I think that's why our budget's so important.

Because what we what we saw coming back in 2020 is we lost a firearms examiner.

And I think I've used the analogy before.

We're staffed to tread water.

So if we lose one staff member, we're already we're we're digging ourselves a hole, we're drowning, but it takes us two years to replace them.

And so I do think there's this aspect, and in our 13 that our goal is the ideal would be if we do lose an examiner, we're not automatically backsliding while we replace that position.

Um given we know we're two years in when we do that.

So budget is important for those disciplines that we actually have just a little.

We will use, we will use that capacity.

They will not be sitting idle.

Um but if we have that, it protects us from getting in this situation.

Thank you.

Uh just quick for the courtroom requests.

Uh the old request comparison task, or some of the case involve general fire firearm examination, like a functional test.

All of the above.

So combined.

We've got cases where it's combined.

We've got cases where it is comparisons, we've got cases where it is fired evidence only, we've got cases where it's gun only.

I mean, it is highly variable.

Okay.

Um, because I I see the comparison task would be take more time.

Yes.

To get people that they are capable to do that.

Yeah.

So in the courtroom.

4,000 cases.

There are some other kind of firearm exam questions, then those type of cases could be easier to handle compare to comparison task.

And and at the end.

Also keep in mind on this.

There is the overlay of the experience level of the prosecutors, the experience level of the court in handling firearms cases get complicated quickly.

And we also have stacked on this some very significant, very real, very serious, don't be ignoring them kinds of criticisms of firearms.

And so it is an ongoing.

We've we've got a case right now that we are we will talk with the DA's office next week about.

Very complicated firearms case.

It has more than a thousand casings involved in it.

Um it's got one of those that I think our examiner said his spidey sense is going off of this could be one of those cases that's a real precedent kind of thing that could be really difficult.

There are multiple cases around the country where firearms evidence has been excluded, has been limited.

Um like I say, the this is evidence that is central to just about every violent crime out there.

So the stakes are immense on this.

So get back to our center, the goal to sign off the firearm examiner is that firearm examiner can handle it.

It's it's difficult comparison, everything.

Just about it's that.

Yeah, firearms is one of those disciplines.

It's difficult.

I mean, we've got some, we we start to sign them off on the functionality stuff first.

Okay.

Um, but it's difficult to sign them off on a lot that's really functional and casework to do independent work without basically the whole thing.

Another analogy of that actually is in seized drugs.

It used to be years ago, before HB 1325, um, we would sign off people in somewhere between about four and six months to do marijuana's, and they could be pretty productive in the laboratory.

After that, because marijuana is now one of the most complicated analyses we do, we end up basically having to train a seized drugs analyst in everything before we can sign them off.

So it has become a much longer arc to train because the simplest thing went away.

So in firearm, we we do have a step one.

Yeah, there is, but it's probably multimedia is about the easiest place where we can sign people off that's actual all the way through casework because it's kind of modularized in the kinds of evidence that we get.

Um it can be very different between disciplines.

But yeah, firearms, it's really tough to sign something off that they can do that minor part, and it really contributes to what's going to court.

I wish.

But thank you.

Any other questions I can answer?

Um so yeah, last bit I had is just an update.

Joni asked about this already of THC.

Just just shoot me.

Uh so yes, the second special session closed out uh with no legislative solution.

Actually, when I made this slide was before the executive order that Governor Abbott issued on THC.

So now there is an executive order that we're all trying to figure out exactly what it means.

The main thing it means is you have to be over 21 to purchase cannabis products.

Um not quite sure what it's going to translate to for the labs yet.

But basically, we are in the same kind of murky circumstance that we've been for the last six years.

It is unclear what really we need to analyze.

It is unclear what is actually really legal and not the whole Delta 8, Delta 9, Delta 10, HHC, all of those things are still pretty murky.

The executive order does attempt to deal with the cannabinolic acid conversion to tetrahydrocannabinol.

I don't know if that's going to work or not.

I just I don't know.

Um I do point out in here, and it is more complicated than this because we did lose staff in the process of this, but before House Bill 1325 was signed, our turnaround time and seized drugs was seven days.

Now it's about 170.

And a lot of that is attributable to the complexities of marijuana.

The fact that it changed how we have to train people, which made it a much longer arc to train people.

Um it's expensive testing, and that has an impact.

And it will continue to have an impact on us for the next two years.

So one quick update about the apprenticeship program.

Um that was what passed in the legislative session.

Uh we basically have funding within that for 18 apprentices statewide.

We have already solicited input from prosecutors and law enforcement agencies about what they view as our priorities.

The prioritization is gonna be DNA firearms, maybe not necessarily in this order, but the the disciplines that we are targeting, DNA firearms, seized drugs, toxicology, um, and probably breath out or probably blood alcohol as part of that toxicology, or what we're targeting for the apprentices in that.

We are meeting regularly.

We actually just met last night um and have got uh daylong session uh second of August 2nd of October to go to Austin and work on.

There's rulemaking that TFSC will need to put in place with this.

All of this money flows through Office of Court Administration and Texas Forensic Science Commission manages it.

There's money in there to contract with the major forensic programs in the state to help with managing this and how this works.

So all of that is going on right now, and that's a big chunk of what I probably will be involved with is working with TFSC and standing this up in the next 12 months.

So that's what I've got.

Any other questions for me?

Good discussion.

Okay.

I wasn't too long there.

Oh, was there another question?

I wasn't too long.

I didn't say anything.

Why was I yawning?

No.

Um additional questions from the board.

Thank you again.

And we'll proceed to agenda item seven, which we actually won't, because agenda item seven has been pulled by our general counsel.

This agreement will be discussed at a later meeting.

Moving forward.

Um Jacqueline Morel.

Well, present.

Hi.

Jackie, I'm sorry.

Who is a quality director, including an overview of the blind quality control program, updates on quality and testimony and metrics.

And don't do it in five minutes.

I will try to rush through.

Yeah.

Take your time.

Well, but Dr.

Stott took all the time, I'm kidding.

Uh good morning, everyone.

Can you hear me?

Perfect.

Um, one of the topics that I'm going to be talking about today is giving you some quality updates.

And I'm kind of happy to be here to present on a HFSC milestone.

Uh, this year, our blind quality control program turned 10.

Um so this program uh started in 2015.

It was a vision and something that uh Dr.

Stout brought over when he first started here at HFSE, and he trusted the Quality Division in sort of growing this program into what it is today.

The blind quality control program consists of us, the quality division creating test samples that emulate and look like real evidence and introducing them into our technical processes as a means of monitoring our processes, methods, procedures, competence of our laboratory, right?

The key word here is blind.

We do try to put a lot of effort into making them look like evidence because we want to truly test and see how casework is treated, right?

They test the competence and also the accuracy of our methods, but the analysts know that they're actively being tested.

So that's one of the things that we really thrive to make this program a subblind.

In fact, I would go on to say that while the intent was to do this for in-house, as you have seen this year, this has this program this blind quality control program has detected and confirmed manufacturing defects from commercial from a commercially available reagent.

So cementing the importance both in-house and for external processes for this program.

Now, as you can see, we have implemented within this uh 10 years uh this program in six of the seven forensic disciplines that we have.

Um Dr.

Stout gave a big exemption card to crime scene because as you can imagine, that's a really hard section to get volunteers or create real emulating samples.

Um over this course of the years, we have submitted over 4,000 cases, and the quality division has spent over 5,000 hours in the creation, only in the creation of these samples.

This time or this averaging does not include all of the research meetings, et cetera, they had to put on the front end to develop and emulate the different processes to make them blind or the administrative and submission paperwork that they have to do on a weekly basis for this.

Um before I continue on to my next topic, I do want to thank Dr.

Stout for trusting us on the quality division for this program.

I want to thank the board for your support and continuing it.

Um I want to use this platform to thank the Quality Division team for all of their dedication and hard work with all these hours spent, right?

Sometimes it's hard to you know do this in a weekly manner and to see the value of it.

So, but they're very dedicated.

And I also wanted um last but not least to uh thank the HFSE staff for slowly embracing and uh this program, right?

And also it pains me to say for thanking them for letting us know when they discover blinds.

Um although at the beginning it might be discouraging, um, it has helped us improve this program throughout the years.

For my next topic, um we had our AB surveillance assessment without witnessing, which is a big name that basically translates into a virtual desk audit that is led by one assessor.

Uh in this assessment, this assessor looked at only 17 of the plethora of the different clauses for the 17025 program.

And uh these clauses focused more on the quality management side of things, don't they go into the technical aspects?

So those are really nice because it's more of a quality works in the background for this and it has minimal operational impact on the sections, right?

Uh there were no non-conformances noted uh during this assessment.

Moving along in the theme of conformance, we wrapped up our client services case management internal audit during the month of August, and no nonconformances were noted.

Now, CSCM is accredited by the AB property and evidence property and evidence accreditation program.

So we have to have a different internal audit from the other sections, right?

Because we have we're handling and managing two different accreditation programs.

Uh for this one, I just kind of wanted to reiterate that internal audits are a great mechanism for us to sort of make sure that we're conforming to our requirements, but it's it's a great way to also see areas of improvement, right?

So while there were no nonconformances noted, there were six recommendations done and noted for the section, right?

These recommendations are a way to promote continuous quality improvement or kind of detect areas where you might be conforming today, but if you continue doing it, it could become a nonconformance in the future, right?

We want to prevent those.

Um last but not least, we have our safety and security audit that kind of oversees a whole facilities that is scheduled for the week of October the 20th through the 24th.

My last topic for today, I'm going to be talking about disclosures.

We recently had a disclosure that was evaluated and reviewed by the Texas Forensic Science Commission during their quarterly meeting that was held on July 25th.

Now, before I move on and start explaining or kind of relating what the disclosure was, I kind of want to give you a little bit of a background as to the requemporaneous documentation accreditation requirement that we have.

Now, for this requirement, in an ideal world, you would contemporaneously, while you're processing your scene or you're conducting analysis in your casework, you would contemporaneously write everything down, conclusions, everything that was collected at that time.

However, we live in the real world where we have phone calls, rain, environmental factors, end of shifts, and other items, right?

So this accreditation requirement kind of understands that we live in the real world.

So while you may not write everything contemporaneously, this requirement allows you, if you were to make additions at a later date, that's okay.

As long as it's depicted and documented the date of those additions, right?

It's kind of to the intent of this is to establish like a chronological timeline as to what effect events factors, everything that it was part of a case.

The way that I kind of see this, it's like a puzzle, right?

Where you need all of the fundamental and important pieces in order to see the whole picture in the case record or what happened in the case record.

When you're missing these, then obviously you can't complete your case record puzzle.

Um so for this instance, we had a CSI that did not document their notes in a contemporaneous manner, right?

They made additions, and when they were approached and questioned by crime scene management, they denied making these additions, right?

Um however, crime scene management had a photo, an earlier photocopy of the case work case copies that confirm that indeed these additions were made.

So unfortunately, the dishonesty and lack of candor was attributed or classified as an integrity issue.

And when we have this type of circumstance, we are required to disclose to our stakeholders and to our accrediting bodies.

And uh during the quarterly meeting, uh the commissioners reviewed our corrective action report, looked at our root cost analysis, our corrective actions uh plan um how we remediated the situation and voted to take no further action needed, meaning that they don't have they didn't have additional questions or needed to do further investigations, and they knew that we did as much as we could.

Um thing I didn't add is that the CSI is no longer uh with HFSE.

Question on this.

What's a person's underlying rationale for not putting the date and time?

Did they just not want to, or were they embarrassed or so?

For this situation, we were unable to interview the CSI to kind of attribute more more so like that root cause as to what was the situation, right?

But it seemed that it was through the investigation that it was something systemic.

What?

Uh something of a systemic behavior.

Systemic, okay, thank you.

In in my experience over the years.

You know, this this is something that we were always concerned of, cautious of.

You can see the footprints of stuff like this in the Missy Woods and the Annie Ducans and some of these notorious circumstances in the U.S.

It's my it's it's kind of me anecdotal.

I don't think where there's any actual like systematic data on this, but the the pressures of turnaround time, even when you try and do as much as you possibly can to insulate people from the analysts feel this.

And the demand for some people tends to drive them to think they are being more productive by doing some of these things when really they aren't.

Um it is a constant thing to be cautious of in all laboratories.

Thank you.

Uh do we know years of experience of these CSI?

She was fairly experienced.

She'd been with us for five years.

Um we all every all of the cases that she was involved with have been disclosed.

They've all had Bertie notices.

Um, so all of that's been disclosed.

No more questions.

Um and for the my last topic, we had um we were recently communicated by one of our outsourced laboratories that we use that they had a disclosure.

So before I proceed, I kind of wanted to give a little bit of perspective of this outsource laboratory, sort of like high level processes.

Again, very high level because my background is in C's drug, not in DNA.

But it's my understanding that for their intake process when they accept sexual assault kits.

Um this kits come with certain evidence envelopes and boxes that contain swabs that prevent contact with other swabs, right?

And these boxes and envelopes, the nurses may document additional criteria or information on them, right?

Um so those there are outsourced laboratory either way that they depict their um processes is that they have like a sort of like an intake technicians where they do the inventory where they document again their notes.

Um they write down everything they observed or that was written in the evidence, and then they caught the swabs in half, where one half is retained for future testing, and the other half half is the one that proceeds through the analytical DNA workflow, right?

So once that swab proceeds forward, um, they have DNA technicians that do the all that wonderful DNA magic and analysis, right?

And and from that data, a DNA and analyst is the one that looks over it, makes their deductions, and report on this, right?

So my intent of this disclosure is to kind of focus and zone in on the initial portion of that inventory intake process for them.

Um during an internal review, they found out that they had a technician, an intake, um, inventory, a technician that had a little bit higher than normal documentation errors, right?

Um they saw that there have there was like some maybe labeling mismatches, typos, ceiling discrepancies, right?

Uh, an example of labeling mismatches would be uh maybe the suspects or the victim's name or whatnot, what was written, maybe maybe it was switched, or if it was common spelling, like Smith, maybe it was the TH kind of um switched.

Uh, this technician would sort of try to like autocorrect it, and that's not part of their procedures.

For them, they want everything translated over because again, we can't make assumptions.

We have to write exactly how it is recorded or seen.

And um, so once they identified this, they let us know on every and evidence that they had on site.

They were able to look at it physically at the evidence and correct and make sure that there was no inconsistencies with the case notes that they had, but they went ahead and disclosed it to us for us to disclose it to her stakeholders.

Um, for instances, in case they're interested, we can coordinate and have this outsource laboratory re-verify um evidence upon request, right?

Make sure that the case notes match, um match the evidence item labeling, or if if it needs to be documented or corrected.

So are there any yeah?

Are there any questions?

Are there any questions?

You have very complete thank you very much.

We really appreciate it.

Okay.

Now we're going to agenda.

If there are no other uh issues, let's proceed to agenda item nine.

This is the executive session in accordance with sections five five one and zero seven one from the government code regarding personnel matters.

And finalize Dr.

Peter Stout, president and CEO's annual evaluation.

At this time, the HFSC board of directors will go into closed meeting.

Also known as an executive session.

And as permitted by the Texas Open Meeting Act.

The closed meeting will not be accessible to the public, and we will ask our staff, which they have just done, to step outside until for the time being, except Dr.

Stout and Ms.

Mann.

Dr.

Stout doesn't have to step out at this point.

Okay.

Um I do not anticipate the closed meeting running too long, but the board does not have a set time to reconvene the these matters today.

Today we'll return when our business has been concluded.

The time is now 9.58.

Please stab the recording at this time.

We are now on closed meeting.

Okay.

The time is now ten forty-nine, and the HFSC Board of Directors is reconvening this open meeting.

For the record, we still have a quorum present.

At this point, I'm going to call on Vice Chair and ask for a motion regarding Dr.

Stout's annual performance evaluation.

Madam Chair, I'd like to propose a three point five percent salary increase for the coming year for Dr.

Stout.

Is there a second?

I second.

Thank you.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

Congratulations, you got three point five.

Well, thank you.

What a shock.

And you're worth a lot more than.

Yes, there you go.

Yes.

I appreciate it.

Thank you all.

I mean, seriously, I do appreciate all the support.

I always felt supported by this board.

I appreciate everything you all do for us.

So thank you.

Does the board do the board members have any comments it was to make?

Oh, I I think you're worth a lot more, a higher higher percentage.

But I also greatly respect the reasons that you want to keep it at that level.

Okay.

Move on to the second item.

Hold on one second.

But we did that.

Sorry, excuse me.

We did that.

Okay, do I have an additional motions related to the executive session?

Yes, Madam Chair.

Um, I would like to propose five goals, uh, performance objectives for Dr.

Stout uh for the next year, and goal number one to continue to expand the visibility is of HFSC at the state and national levels.

Goal two, continue to expand the visibility of HFSC and its leaders to uh at the local level.

Goal three, continue working with the Texas Forensic Science Commission and State Universities to make progress on implementing the Texas Forensic Analyst Apprenticeship Pilot Program.

Goal number four, expand board engagement with external stakeholders, government officials, and community members, and goal five, continue improving marketing and communication strategies for the organization.

I would propose that as a motion.

Thank you.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Do you have a second?

So moved.

Thank you.

Any discussion?

Please unmute your mics.

All in favor of the motion, say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed?

The motion carries.

We shall record that.

Okay, we're moving on to agenda item eleven.

You have a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

No, no one wants to make a motion.

Everybody's so happy.

We're gonna stay here through lunch.

You have a motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Thank you.

Second?

Second.

Thank you.

All in favor?

Aye.

Hi.

Aye.

Any opposed?

Nay.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.