AFTER YEARS of working in the public and private sectors of forensic science, Arthur Young, a forensic-biology specialist, realized that neither system was working.
"We were sitting around saying no matter how you cut this pie, it's always bad," he said. "We thought maybe the solution was a different cut of the pie."
So, in 2010, Young and his partners founded Guardian Forensics, a small lab near Philadelphia that operates as a nonprofit agency.
"We realized forensic science, which exists at the boundary of science and the law, that politics was being added into the equation, as if things weren't hard enough already," Young said.
Guardian Forensics serves defense attorneys, police agencies and private citizens. The work is done for less than at most private labs, Young said, and, sometimes, he even takes a loss.
Last year, residents in Chester were irate when a cop fatally shot Daniel Simms. The cops needed to prove that a gun found at the scene had been in Simms' hands. Young processed the DNA for free because he didn't want the residents to think that he might be biased.
"Simply because, if you were the family of Daniel Simms and the results come back that your relative had the gun, well, you're going to say this guy was paid to get the results they wanted," Young said.
That commitment to his community is what keeps Young working nonstop when there is a murder, kidnapping or any other case that needs to be solved, he said.
"I will stay up, I will miss dinner because this is a local case and it means something to me and my community," he said."I want to be sure that Guardian survives because I think this is the model that forensic science should be."
