Many Americans have seen their fair share of movies or TV shows that deal with forensic technology, which may leave some wondering how that fingerprint scan or DNA database works in real life.

In Onondaga County, it takes five divisions of specialized professionals and technology to cover all forensic bases, working step by step with law enforcement to keep the community safe. The divisions are firearms, digital evidence, forensic chemistry, forensic biology and latent prints.

Ranee Ho is director of laboratories for Onondaga County. She said one of the five primary sections of the forensic lab is firearms.

“Here in New York state, we do what’s called operability testing,” she said. “We check the firearm to make sure that it functions and any magazines that are collected from it fit in with the firearm that was collected.”

The forensic lab is in charge of determining the status of weapons submitted as evidence, as well as determining the status of any projectiles or casings found at a scene.

That includes microscopic imagery that can link those projectiles to unique features of individual firearms.

The digital evidence discipline examines submitted electronic media, including hard drives, optical discs, flash memory and digital cameras.

Ho said the forensic chemistry section deals with everything from drugs to fire accelerants in arson investigations.

“Here, we test substances that are external from the body,” she said. “We can test controlled substances that range anywhere from heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and different types of opioids.”

It is the forensic biology department that handles testing bodily fluids like blood and saliva, and linking associated DNA with individuals or other crime scenes.

“Our laboratory has a state-of-the-art instrumentation and equipment that allows us to perform a DNA analysis at a higher capacity, which makes it a whole lot more efficient,” she said.

The fifth section works with identifying latent finger prints, or prints that cannot be seen with the naked eye.

“We have a laboratory that utilizes different physical chemical and visual techniques in order to see them and make them more apparent, so that we can obtain the prints and the impressions and utilize them for comparisons,” Ho said.

She stressed that the five sections are all different, but each require a high level of expertise, and all operate with the same goal of supporting the county’s justice and public safety programs.

“A lot of it is hands on. It requires a human being. No machine, instrument or AI robotics can replace what this discipline does,” she said.

The laboratories are accredited by the New York State Commission on Forensic Science and The American National Standards Institute’s National Accreditation Board.