RS&A Online Training

You have now been given or assigned the responsibility of being the manager of a Latent Print Unit. Hopefully, you have the technical knowledge to perform as the senior technical person for the unit. If not, then you probably need to be looking for a different version of this training. If you are an experienced latent print examiner, then this short program of instruction is for you. Making decisions based upon best industry practices sounds fine and good, but what does that really mean?

• How do I fill the positions within my unit?
  
  
• How do I get the most production out of my staff of latent print examiners without sacrificing accuracy?
  
  
• How do I design a set of operation manuals which will keep us on track without impeding our examination of casework?
  
  
• How do I achieve “buy in” from my staff members to the way in which I wish the unit to function?
  
  
• How do I help them grow professionally?
  
  
• How do I properly handle the mistakes, which will most certainly occur?
  
  
• How do I ensure that the testimony they provide in court is consistent with the agency’s position and consistent with the industry recommendations?
  
  

These questions and more will be addressed in this training program. Hopefully, you will find it helpful in the management of your own unit.

I, Ron Smith, have been an examiner, a manager and or technical leader in the field of latent prints for almost 50 years. I have made more management mistakes than I care to count, but I have learned so much from them. I have worked for some of the best, and some of the worst, managers and laboratory directors in the business and they all contributed to my practical knowledge of how to manage a latent print unit.

The method of instruction I have chosen may seem somewhat odd at first. We will be discussing some of the worst, just plain dumb, ideas that I personally have experienced in my career. I hope you understand that although I now work in the private sector, where we can operate much more freely and efficiently than government-run laboratories, the majority of my career was spent working for state or federal agencies. I did, however, in the last couple of decades of my government employment, discover that there were things that a government agency latent print manager could accomplish just by doing the research and proposing a ready made solution to the directors, instead of just presenting the problem.