Law enforcement trained on new machine to detect chemicals, reduce wait for crime lab results
Butler County law enforcement has a new weapon at its disposal to detect drugs and poisons: the MX908, a handheld mass spectrometer chemical detection device.
According to Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger, the closest crime lab is all the way in Greensburg, in Westmoreland County, and it is routinely backlogged, so the machine — currently housed at the Butler County Prison — offers a local resources for the county’s police departments and the jail.
“It can examine and identify trace substances,” Callery borough police chief Matthew Irvin said at an Oct. 7 meeting. “If we have a bag of something unknown, or something we might think might be poisonous, we can use that device to examine that stuff and not have to send it to a crime lab.”
Butler County board of commissioners approved the purchase of the machine in April for $101,462, at the request of county District Attorney Rich Goldinger. About 65% of the money used for the purchase came from opioid settlement funds, while the remaining 35% came from American Rescue Plan Act funding.
Goldinger says the machine has not been used in any investigations yet, as it has only recently arrived, but officers from multiple local departments have been trained on how to use it.
“There were several training sessions put on by the county at the courthouse over the past month, and a bunch of local officers went and were trained on the device and how to use it,” Irvin said.
Irvin said police departments, such as his, often were waiting six to eight months for results from a crime lab. Having access to a device in their own backyard will save precious time, he continued.
He said the machine also is able to identify common, harmless substances, reducing the possibility of false positives.
“If it’s just baking soda, it’ll hit on the common ingredients, and it tells us what it is,” Irvin said.
