An automated approach to conduct effective on-site presumptive drug tests

Abstract

Drug traffickers are active and always looking for new ways to mix drugs to avoid their detection and identification. One example is black cocaine, which is a mixture of cocaine base and cocaine hydrochloride and other additional substances. It is challenging for investigators to accurately identify the test for investigative purposes without conducting an on-site evaluation. Presumptive drug test is the preliminary on-site test, conducted by a crime scene investigative officer to detect the presence of a substance by changing color with a chemical reagent. The current approach is manual and relies heavily on the expertise of the officer conducting the test and is limited by their physical ability and other environmental factors. This research aims at developing a novel web-based solution to perform automated presumptive drug tests. The reporting and attestation and reporting are also fully automated. The solution includes real-time interactions between the on-site and the off-site investigative teams. The practical application of this approach is in the field of crime scene investigation both on-site and in the off-site laboratories. The application has been evaluated successfully with two nationally recognized forensic laboratories. Furthermore, a stand-alone hardware/software co-design approach (for security and privacy reasons) is being incorporated as am automated tool in the mobile vehicles of the investigative team.