SLED officials brief House subcommittee on staffing, backlogs and new lab technology

South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) forensic supervisors outlined unit responsibilities, recent hires, equipment upgrades and remaining capacity challenges at a House subcommittee meeting.

Lieutenant Courtney Adams, supervisor of SLED’s computer crimes unit, told the panel that the unit is now fully staffed after recent General Assembly funding and that its work ranges from phone and computer extractions to vehicle infotainment and cryptocurrency tracing. "As of last week, we are fully staffed," Adams said, and added that new equipment received last month should reduce the current processing backlog in the coming fiscal year.

The presentation covered unit services, on‑call rotations and partnerships with federal agencies. Adams said the computer crimes unit added cryptocurrency tracing in 2023 and has traced "over $1,000,000" in cryptocurrency since then; she cited a 2024 case in which the unit assisted the U.S. Secret Service that led to the seizure of $80,000 in Bitcoin.

Lieutenant Todd Shank, who oversees crime‑scene investigations, described field capabilities and training. He said the team runs a year‑to‑18‑month internal training program and that SLED has licensed drone pilots under the FAA Part 107 program and uses drone‑based 3‑D modeling to document scenes more quickly. "It took us less than 30 minutes of flight time" to build an outdoor model, Shank said, noting the technology pairs with an existing FARO 3‑D scanner.

Captain Wendy Bell, who leads the Forensic Operations Division, introduced unit supervisors for implied consent (breath testing), trace evidence, drug analysis and toxicology, and summarized staffing across the chemistry units.

Lieutenant Randy Brown (Implied Consent) said his staff perform roughly 900 inspections of breath‑testing and video recording systems annually, that unit operations are governed by state law and regulations, and that the legislature provided funds to upgrade the video recording system statewide. "The state legislators gave us over $3,000,000 to upgrade that system," Brown said; he also reported the ASHA breath‑testing instrument upgrade started in 2025 and should take about a year to complete statewide.

Lieutenant Jennifer Nates described the Trace Evidence and Questioned Documents unit and its instrumentation (FTIR, SEM/EDX, GC‑MS, GRIM). Nates said gunshot‑primer‑residue backlog fell from nearly 4,000 items in 2021 to about 251 at the end of last year, helped by changes to acceptance policy and analysis processes, but noted some specialty detectors will soon be unsupported by vendors and will require replacement budgeting.

Lieutenant Angel Landrum (Drug Analysis) discussed submission types, statistical sampling plans and historical workload growth. He said SLED distributes about 15,000 best‑evidence submission (BES) kits annually and that caseload growth following industrial hemp changes increased assignments substantially; SLED’s backlog peaked in 2022–23 but has declined as staffing and instruments were added. "The department has a total backlog of 17,567 cases," Landrum reported, and he said priority cases for court are expedited to meet trial schedules.

Lieutenant Dustin Smith (Toxicology) described adoption of higher‑throughput instrumentation, including a liquid‑chromatography quadrupole time‑of‑flight system (LC‑QTOF), which he said expanded screening from roughly two dozen classes to some 300–350 specific drugs and improves sensitivity and turnaround for blood analyses. "What that allows us to do is it allows us to determine specifically what drug is present in a blood sample and it gives us an approximate concentration," Smith said. He added SLED’s toxicology turnaround and backlog metrics compare favorably to national percentiles but that newer drugs require validation steps that can slow some cases.

Votes at a glance: The committee approved the meeting minutes from Nov. 5, 2025 by roll call (3 ayes, 0 nays; Representatives Garvin, Gilliam and Wooden recorded aye votes).

Why it matters: Forensic lab capacity, equipment life cycles and staffing affect criminal investigations and court timetables. SLED officials requested continued support to replace aging detectors and to maintain training pipelines for specialized disciplines such as questioned documents and trace evidence.

Next steps: Members asked staff to compile statutory references and any regulations that may need review and to return future updates on staffing, equipment replacement timelines and case‑priority handling. The committee adjourned after the presentations.