Police to unveil CSI-style unit for evidence

A new Boston police crime scene investigation unit has completed intensive training in state-of-the-art evidence collection techniques and will be unveiled by the department this week, officials said.

About 30 investigators completed their training on Friday and will hit the streets within a few days, two Boston Police Department officials with knowledge of the program said last night.

The initiative was first announced last April, when top officials in the department said they wanted to restore confidence in the unit after faulty evidence collection was blamed for a number of wrongful convictions.

Officials also said they were responding to raised public expectations about forensic science created by the hugely-popular ''CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" television shows.

According to the officials, who asked not to be named, the training was conducted by instructors from the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science in Connecticut, which is affiliated with the University of New Haven. The training included several mock crime scenes set up this week inside Boston police headquarters, where investigators photographed mock crime victims and collected fingerprints and other evidence, the officials said.

One aim of the initiative, the officials said, was to have not only a better-trained unit, but a more flexible one where investigators are cross-trained in a variety evidence collection techniques ranging from photographing bodies to analyzing ballistics.

Police officials announced a need for an overhaul of the department's evidence collection procedures -- particularly in the fingerprint lab -- in April.

At the time, Captain Thomas Dowd said that the goal of the overhaul was to have a ''standardized response" to crimes across the city, no matter what time of day or night they were committed or which investigators were available.

''You want it done so it's right, so it's bulletproof and will stand up 100 percent in court," Dowd said last year. ''We really didn't have any choice."

In October 2004, a private consultant issued a scathing critique of the fingerprint unit's work. The consultant, Ron Smith, said the police officers working in the unit were poorly trained and overwhelmed by advanced fingerprinting work.

The fingerprinting unit was blamed for the wrongful conviction of Stephan Cowans of Roxbury, who was charged in the shooting and wounding of a police officer in 1997. Cowans was released from prison in January 2004 after serving about 6 1/2 years.

Lee, who has served as an expert in a number of high-profile criminal cases across the United States, opened the institute in 1998 and conducts workshops for law enforcement, fire, and public safety officials, according to the institute's website.

Maria Cramer and Cristina Silva of the Globe staff and Globe correspondent Cyra Master contributed to this report.