Police’s new HK$1.4m mobile forensics lab slashes time in serious crime

The police force officially launched its first mobile forensics laboratory last month, and has already been mobilized in a murder investigation.

The HK$1.4 million mobile lab was retrofitted from the Mercedes Benz Sprinter519 medium-sized van. Police said the new mobile lab will shorten the forensic team’s response time to serious crime scenes and expedite testing results.

The mobile lab is divided into three sections, a fingerprint examination workstation, a storage room for equipment and tools, and a partition for outdoor operational gear such as portable tents and outdoor lighting systems located at the vehicle’s rear.

New portable equipment was also loaded onto the vehicle, costing between HK$200,000 and HK $400,000 each, including a 3D contactless fingerprint scanner that can produce prints of the deceased in around 30 minutes.

Tan Tung-fai, the chief inspector of the Identification Bureau’s advanced Technology section, expressed optimism for the new mobile lab to reduce the time frame for them to receive results from half a day to a little more than an hour.

Tan emphasized the importance of having the evidence ready for investigators as soon as possible to aid in their enforcement work. He also highlighted the lab's performance in a murder case last month was satisfactory.

Meanwhile, Tan revealed that the Identification Bureau’s initial plan to establish a forensic vehicle examination compound in 2029 will be postponed due to the government's budget constraints.