Organisation Chart

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Forensic Science Division

Responsibilities

The Forensic Science Division provides a comprehensive forensic scientific service to the Criminal Justice System in Hong Kong. In meeting that commitment the service seeks to be impartial, accurate and efficient, complementing a wide range of specialist analytical tasks with informed scientific opinion on the significance of the results obtained.

It is the primary obligation of the Division to provide services to Government Departments concerned with law and order without fiscal restraint at individual case level but subvented organisations, such as the Hospital Authority, provide an overall annual payment which accrues to General Treasury revenue, to cover use of the Division's analytical services.

Besides performing laboratory analyses on articles submitted for examination by these departments, the Division also provides a round-the-clock crime scene examination service, which aims to lend expert assistance to the identification and retrieval of relevant scientific evidence materials for examination. The myriad of scenes requiring attendance ranges from the relatively simple burglaries, to serious ones in homicides, rapes, etc. There are also officers specially trained for more specialised investigations, such as the causes of fires, re-constructing traffic accidents, interpreting bloodstain patterns where blood is shed and investigating suspected illicit drug manufacturing/cultivation activities.

Organisation

The Division comprises two Groups of sections viz. the Criminalistics and Quality Management Group (seven sections) and the Drugs, Toxicology and Documents Group (five sections).

Criminalistics and Quality Management Group

The Group, headed by a Chief Chemist, provides a wide range of forensic testing services to law enforcement agencies, such as laboratory analyses on trace evidence, impression evidence and DNA evidence. The group also provides a round-the-clock crime scene examination and consultation service, which aims to lend expert assistance to the identification, retrieval and preservation of scientific evidence materials for examination. There are officers specially trained to ascertain causes of fires, reconstruct traffic accidents and interpret bloodstain patterns in violent crimes.

Chief Chemist: Mr. Y M Cheung
(Tel. No. 2762-3794 E-mail: ymcheung@govtlab.gov.hk)

The Criminalistics and Quality Management Group comprises seven operational sections as follows:


Drugs, Toxicology and Documents Group

The Group, headed by a Chief Chemist, mainly examines cases in the following three areas:

  • Abused drugs.
  • Analysis of blood and urine in drink-driving and drug-driving cases, urinalysis and hair drug testing to support abused drug monitoring programmes, and toxicological examination. The toxicological examination service seeks to ascertain the presence or otherwise of drugs and poisons where they are implicated in suspicious deaths and criminal offences.
  • The routine examination of handwriting and documents. The group also offers techical advice and support in respect of quality of offical documents with security features such as Hong Kong Identity Cards.

Chief Chemist: Dr. K Y To
(Tel. No. 2762-3809 E-mail: kyto@govtlab.gov.hk)

The Drugs, Toxicology and Documents Group comprises five sections:

Quality Assurance

From 1996-2011, the Forensic Science Division was accredited by American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors / Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB) under the Legacy Programme; since 2011, it has been accredited by Hong Kong Accreditation Service (HKAS) under ISO/IEC 17025. The transition to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard extended the accreditation scope for the Division to include non-crime testing areas such as hair drug testing in screening and monitoring the rehabilitation of drug-abusers.