“The areas where most of the evidence collected at crime scenes is analyzed are run by women,” revealed the director of the Forensic Police, the Dominican equivalent of the CSI units we watch on television. The director, Colonel Hector J. Diaz, stated that the ballistics lab, fingerprinting and document examination laboratories are run by women police officers. Together with Vehicle Identification they make up the Scientific Police in the Technical Criminalist Department.
First Lieutenant Lucy Maria Brito Corporan is in charge of the ballistics lab, which is key to solving crimes involving firearms. She has nine employees under her leadership. Captain Flerida Mejia Garcia runs the document lab, where she and her four employees are responsible for checking the documents found at a crime scene or that are under investigation at a prosecutor’s request. They also deal with currency issues, such as counterfeiting. The captain told El Caribe reporters that they usually worked on six cases a day, which is different from ballistics where they are generally working on as many as 12 cases a day.