Cloudy skies. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable..

Cloudy skies. Low around 55F. Winds light and variable.

ASHLAND Scientists have created technology to keep up with the ever-changing drug industry in the form of a handheld portable device police can use to scan drugs at a crime scene to determine their chemical compositions.

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. has created and sold the TruNarc handheld narcotics analyzer to more than 110 law enforcement agencies in 34 U.S. states and 33 countries that uses Raman spectroscopy in determining results.

Police can use the device (about the size of a closed fist) to point and shoot a laser scanner at the drugs to get a reading in 90 seconds, using a database to determine what drug is present, if any.

Determining the makeup of new designer drugs — and keeping up with the latest trends — has become particularly challenging to local law enforcement, especially “flakka,” also known by its street name, “alpha,” a synthetic compound related to bath salts.

Joseph Smith, business developer for Thermo Fisher Scientific, said the company has been selling the devices since 2012, and the technology has a less than 1 percent rate of false positives.

As no technology is perfect, Smith said, “We do monitor ours (TruNarc devices) to make sure it’s (rate of false positives) always going to be below a certain level. We consider it’s the lowest possible, given the technology we’re working with.”

The company works closely with the national forensic sharing system and the federal Drug Enforcement Agency to keep up with the latest high-frequency drugs and schedulings. The company also reviews feedback from its customers and labs to keep its library current, and users are not charged for updates.

The device can be pricey, though, according to Franklin County Sheriff Lt. Jason Grellner, who works in a Missouri department west of St. Louis that used TruNarc devices for almost two years. The department’s drug task force is operating with two devices in a jurisdiction that covers about 200,000 and four counties.

Each handheld unit can cost upward of $20,000, but Grellner said the device’s five-year-warranty and durability make it worth the price.

The company encourages users to put the TruNarc results up against certified lab results or gas chromatographs. Grellner said his department did just that and found no false positives after several tests.

In fact, Grellner said his department has been fighting against a rise in the use and manufacturing of methamphetamine, but TruNarc aided in discovering just how prevalent fentanyl was becoming in the community.

“To be honest, I was kind of scared when we started getting a lot of positive tests for fentanyl and thought there was a problem with the machine. So we actually decided to check the accuracy of the machine and took several samples to the state lab for testing and found that every one of our tests were accurate,” Grellner said.

“It’s great for law enforcement to have the ability to see new trends quicker than waiting six to eight months to get results back from a state laboratory. It can let us know if there’s a batch of heroin laced with fentanyl and we can identify and get the word out quickly,” Grellner continued.

Grellner said the device has been most helpful in speeding up cases by cutting out the waiting period between getting a warrant and pressing charges, which can move cases along and get addicts into treatment programs quicker.

The machines are also used by the Cape Cod Drug Task Force, by the Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office and the city of Yarmouth Police Department in Massachusetts. The Yarmouth police used a $25,000 U.S. Department of Justice grant to buy the machine, according to the Cape Cod Times, and the sheriff’s department was given money from a foundation to foot the bill.

Grellner said his department used federal forfeiture money to get its devices.

The device is similar to what Kentucky law enforcement use to quantify blood alcohol concentration called an “Intoxilyzer 5000,” not to be confused with “breathalyzer” tests, which are not considered in quantifying the amount of alcohol in someone’s blood.

A key part of the technology is the tests printed out of the machine before and after to show it is free from cross-contamination and is recalibrated.

Boyd County Circuit Judge George Davis had not previously heard of the particular device, but said state appellate courts will have to ultimately determine if they are admissable.

Kentucky essentially mirrors federal law, as established in the Daubert case, on how scientific evidence is supposed to be considered by courts. For instance, considerations include how it can be tested, a search for peer reviews of the technology, determining its known rate of error and other standards.

“Any tool that could speed the process for analyzing those substances would be helpful, but we have to determine whether this is a reliable tool or not,” Davis said.

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