By Kathleen Morse
The Daily Gazette
SCHENECTADY, N.Y. — The city’s new arson investigators will have their work cut out for them.
Last year, 48 fires in the city were ruled intentional, and 13 were tricky enough that firefighters still aren’t sure what happened.
When the city’s investigators take on their first cases, they won’t be starting with a clean slate. In addition to the 13 fires of undetermined origin from last year, they have to finish investigations for 17 other fires. And that’s just last year -- there are many other fires that still need work, as well as all of this year’s suspicious blazes so far.
“Whether it’s following up on an open case or interviewing people on a recent fire, there’s plenty of work,” Chief Michael Della Rocco said.
The City Council is expected to approve the investigators’ new status next Monday. Then they will be able to delve deeper into some cases, combing through insurance records and criminal databases, all of which are available only to law enforcement personnel. The arson investigators will have that status through the District Attorney’s Office.
They already gather evidence -- fingerprints and DNA have led to some arrests -- and the entire team has the state’s highest arson investigation certification. But until they get law enforcement status, they can’t close cases on their own. They’re not even allowed to interview witnesses once it’s clear a fire was an arson.
Police are overworked and are willing to give the job to the Fire Department, Della Rocco said. The hope is that firefighters will be able to close cases more quickly.
But Della Rocco said the change might not help them close older cases. Those might be open for want of additional evidence, not more manpower.
“New information does come in,” the chief said. “A long time ago we had a fire in a church At the time, we figured we won’t ever find out about this.” But they took fingerprints, and five years later the arsonist was arrested for another crime. The database matched the prints and he confessed to starting the fire, he said.
“We’ve had cases of fires that were years old, and new evidence comes up,” Della Rocco said.
But in some cases, the evidence was destroyed in the fire. He cited the blaze in 2004 on Division Street, in which six people died, as one where the evidence might have burned with the family.
Still, that fire is listed as “undetermined.”
“If we put ‘undetermined’ on a fire, we can still charge someone years later,” he said.
Copyright 2012 The Daily Gazette