35 Years at the Coke Face – a Brief History of (My) Time

Julian Dunnill, Drugs Expert and Forensic Scientist, retires in December 2024. Here he writes about his career and the changes he has seen over more than three decades working in the Criminal Justice System.

Let me take you back to 30^th April 1990. An unassuming date for most, but for me it was the day I first walked through the gates of the Home Office Forensic Science Service (FSS) Wetherby laboratory to begin my career as a forensic scientist.

Career – that’s a funny word. One definition is ‘to progress in an uncontrolled way’. Yes, that fits.

It transpired that I should have worked in the ‘biology’ department but, due to notice periods, I was fortunate enough to be pipped to that post by a colleague, and I was duly, and surprisingly, dispatched to the drugs department. By the end of the day, however, I knew I had found my niche.

What followed, whilst cliché, has truly been a roller coaster ride, or to use appropriate vernacular, an amazing trip.

Drugs have crept insidiously into society during my time as a forensic scientist. To put some scale on this, when I started, I was the fifth member of the drugs team at FSS Wetherby. At its height, in around 2005, the drugs team had around 40 staff and a bottomless, and irresistible, overtime budget.

I learned my trade at the bench for 3 years, examining and analysing drugs, whilst gaining wider knowledge of the world of drugs. I trained to report in 1993, dealing with a wide range of drug-related matters, took conduct of drug scene examinations and eventually became a lead for all matters on cannabis cultivation.

The field of drugs has often been seen a poor relation in forensics and I have often been asked what the attraction has been. Well, it probably depends on your personality as to whether it suits or not, but the never-ending, ever-changing, rapid-fire environment is exciting for a start. Also being a chemistry nerd at heart, the challenges of analysis and drug synthesis have kept me entertained. For me, the main attraction is of being an expert in a field that, as an ordinary member the public on the right side of the law, you shouldn’t really know much about. Bizarrely, growing up I was probably the least likely person to become an expert on drugs!

Anyway, slowly but surely, I became that expert. As I developed, the Home Office FSS evolved into a government agency, which evolved into a GovCo, and which finally evolved into closure in 2012 when the FSS was wound up. By curious coincidence, my first day for 22 years of not being a forensic scientist was also 30^th April. After a short foray into the pharmaceutical industry, I joined Keith Borer Consultants to resume forensics.

So, beyond being made redundant, what have been the most memorable and more entertaining moments? Well, here’s a few:

• Having to explain myself at Leeds Bradford airport, having been abandoned by a colleague, with no ID and in possession of 8 holdalls full of cannabis resin (work business, I promise!).
• Parking in the wrong spot at a police training school and returning to find my car surrounded by the bomb squad. (That car would actually have benefited from a controlled explosion!).
• Finding a manuscript of a demonic incantation in a case of magic mushrooms and realising I probably shouldn’t be reciting it out loud (though a senior manager did curiously appear, nonetheless).
• Having a Judge and the rest of the court laughing when I suggested I wasn’t the right person to answer questions on the role of benzocaine in avoiding premature ejaculation.
• Attending a cultivation scene to find out later that a suspect with a machine gun had been in hiding there.
• Being called to Court to be asked a single question as to whether or not I had encountered a very common drug before, and watching the Judge subsequently erupt in anger at Counsel.
• Seeing the excruciating look on a police expert’s face when he had to admit in Court that he was only 4 years old when I, his opposite number that day, had started my forensic career.
• Accusing a neighbour of growing cannabis when it was me that smelled of the drug having been to a cultivation scene that day.
• Being able to spend an ‘all expenses paid’ year working in the state laboratory in New Zealand, with the opportunity to tick so many things off the bucket list.

I have been to just about every Crown Court in the UK and some Courts further afield. For me, this this has (mostly) always been the best part of the job, giving evidence. I am aware that, for many an expert, this is the worst part, but I love the theatre of a court room and, once you accept that you are there to assist and that you have as much right to contribute as anyone else present, it’s really quite enjoyable.

My very first court experience was amusing, in fact. I attended that hub of the UK CJS - Huddersfield Magistrates’ Court. The hearing went without a glitch, apart the solicitor referring to my then place of work as a forensic lavatory rather than a laboratory (no comment). The amusing part was that, after the event, the solicitor admitted it was his first time presenting a case and appeared horrified when I said it was my first time giving evidence also.

Latterly, the world of drugs evidence has changed a lot and I find myself applying my knowledge into new areas such as EncroChat message interpretation and offending-level assessment based on telephone usage algorithms; a far cry from laboratory work. I do end my working days feeling that I have tackled most issues in the wonderful world of drugs.

So, here I am rapidly rolling to the end of my career. I depart with a mixture of sadness on leaving and excitement on a new start. Having 'done drugs' for 35 years, there comes a time, to quote the 80’s anti-drug campaigns, when you should ‘just say no’!

Goodbye, good luck, and thank you to all I have worked with across the various aspects of the UK CJS, and for the encouragement, support and appreciation I have received over the years.

I hope I have been of some use!