ANDERSON — Now in the second year of a three-year $500,000 forensics upgrade, Anderson police are poised to conduct the exams that can bring quick results and close cases throughout Anderson County.

With new hardware and technical capability, investigators can perform cyber-forensics on cellular phones, CDs, DVDs, PDAs, electronic games and computer hard drives. They can also help officers make arrests with video enhancement, crime-scene mapping, fingerprinting and the discovery of fibers or body fluids using alternate light sources.

George Cremer, Anderson’s crime scene forensics director, said the city police have already used the grant to gain the capability that he spent 17 years developing at the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office.

The resources are available to any law enforcement agency that needs assistance, he said.

The technology and training is being funded through the South Carolina Department of Public Safety with a Federal Justice Assistance Grant.

Jim Bolt, computer forensics investigator, said the money is helping the city enter cooperative agreements with police in the cities of Iva, Belton, Pelzer, Honea Path and Williamston along with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office, the 10th Judicial Circuit solicitor’s office and the South Carolina Highway Patrol.

“Our equipment is comparable to that used by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division,” said Bolt, who indicated that members of the team would also have the skills needed to offer courtroom testimony. That means less of a backlog as agencies turn to Anderson instead of SLED.

To make the system more reliable, Anderson forensics investigator Chris Wilson said witnesses to crimes or accidents need to cooperate.

“Don’t touch anything,” said Wilson, who joins Cremer at crime scenes, gathering evidence and using electronic equipment to map details of the crime.

Recently, Wilson monitored a variety of devices inside a secure area at the police department.

He monitored gauges on a super-glue-fuming chamber, which was filling with a fine mist that adheres to fingerprints on items such as paper, rocks or metal objects.

Minutes earlier, Wilson looked for clues in a theft case by scanning a surveillance tape with one monitor while electronically cutting images from the tape and enhancing them on another monitor.

Bolt said an abduction or homicide would be priorities for members of the Anderson forensics group, but other forensic exams by computer could be processed 24 hours-a-day and 7 days-a-week.

They can retrieve records of calls made by cellular phones, finding pornographic images on computers or other devices and establishing links for investigators in working white-collar or Internet crimes.

Each forensics exam can be completed faster than before, he said.

Only law enforcement agencies in Greenville and Spartanburg have capabilities that are similar to what is now used in Anderson, Bolt said.

“We stand to win more cases, prosecute more cases and obtain more guilty verdicts,” he said.