Page 1.indd - Wingspan

NEIGHBORHOOD
14
Wingspan
campus news
October 10, 2011
wingspan.lccc.wy.edu
Health, DCI combine to be college’s neighbor
By Cody D. Medrano
Features Editor
Down the street from Laramie
County Community College is
a building with a “Combined
Laboratories” sign. The combined
laboratories, situated at 208 S.
College Drive, are the main hub of
both the Wyoming Department of
Health and the Wyoming Division
of Criminal Investigation (DCI).
In 1985, the DCI was situated in
the Rogers Building on the corner
of 19th Street and Carey Avenue.
The building was originally the Old
Millers Grocery Store, which was
renovated when the need for the
DCI arose. The building was also
home to administrative offices and
the Wyoming State Crime Lab.
DCI’s Internet Crimes Against
Children (ICAC) division operated
out of the Quest Building on
Yellowstone Road because of a lack
of space in the Rogers Building.
Because of the overflow of personnel
in the Rogers Building, the
Wyoming Legislature recognized
DCI needed a new facility to be
able to perform at the necessary
level. The Legislature also needed
to move the Health Department.
The decision was made to use
property the state had owned for
quite some time and put the two
departments together in the one
building, thus giving it the name
Combined Laboratories.
In 1973, the Wyoming
Legislature created the Division
of Criminal Investigation to
enforce the Wyoming Controlled
Substances Act, investigate organized
crime across jurisdictional
boundaries and later investigate
crimes against children over the
Internet.
“We’re basically the drug
enforcement police for the entire
state,” DCI Director Forrest Bright
said. The DCI works closely with
sheriffs of the state in Wyoming
and has 13 offices statewide,
Combined Laboratories being the
headquarters.
Bright is in charge of 30 state
officers and another 31 task force
officers. These officers are appointed
by the state to work full time
specifically in narcotics operations.
These 61 officers work on nothing
but narcotics enforcement within
the 13 offices. In addition to the
number of arrests or indictments
made against drug dealers and
other criminals, DCI works after
the arrest to get to the source, finding
the distributor of the drugs for
which they have made arrests.
Unfortunately, an educational
relationship between the LCCC
criminal justice program and the
DCI is impossible because of security.
A full criminal background
check must be conducted to allow
someone to walk the area unescorted;
otherwise, someone must
have an agent escort him at all
times in the facility.
These checks take too much
time to make such an arrangement
feasible. The reason for this is the
building houses criminal information
and leaks to anyone outside
the DCI must be avoided.
Although the DCI is mainly
used for drug enforcement cases
and Internet crimes, there have
been cases in which the DCI has
been requested on several other
types of crimes such as murders
and embezzlement. This is usually
through the requests of sheriffs,
district attorneys, county attorneys
or the governor.
Through humble beginnings
starting off in a renovated grocery
store and sharing the space with
administrators and a state crime
lab, the DCI has grown into a
sought-after law enforcement unit.
From working tirelessly to find
drug distributors to actually being
requested by other divisions, DCI
has become an integral part of the
law enforcement. And now it’s our
LCCC neighbor.
Combining
two worlds:
Technology
from the new
Combined
Laboratories
building down
the street from
Laramie County
Community
College. The
building houses
the Department
of Health and
the Wyoming
Division of
Criminal
Investigation.
Photos by Cody D. Medrano