Going ballistic at HPD

Every bullet tells a story for firearms examiner Curtis Kubo

Curtis Kubo Title: Criminalist III Job: Examines firearms evidence for the Honolulu Police Department

Curtis Kubo is a police firearms examiner whose lab work often plays a role in determining the outcome of criminal court cases.

Kubo says he was first exposed to firearms when he would go hunting with his father on the Big Island, where he was raised and graduated from Hilo High School. In fact, Kubo says, he had originally planned for a career in game management, probably somewhere on the mainland.

However, despite earning a degree in zoology from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, he instead became an evidence specialist for the Honolulu Police Department, after following up on a job-placement ad.

"I was thinking of moving to the mainland (to pursue game management)," Kubo said in an interview late last month. "That's when the ad for the evidence specialist appeared, so I applied for that and just stayed with it."

Initially Kubo helped process crime scenes, but these days he works with one other criminalist in the lab at HPD headquarters, trying to figure out what stories are to be learned from the firearms evidence.

Kubo, 51, is single and lives in Makiki.

Mark Coleman: What is your actual job title?

Curtis Kubo: My official title is a Criminalist III.

Q: I was told you were a firearms criminalist.

A: Yes, my specialty is doing exams on firearms-related evidence. In the field they call us firearms examiners.

Q: How long have you been working as a firearms examiner?

A: For about 11 years now. But I started working in the (Honolulu Police) department in '82, as an evidence specialist, where I would go out to the crime scenes and process the crime scenes.

Q: Is your job sort of like the TV show "CSI" (Crime Scene Investigation)?

A: (Laughter) Actually, I never even saw that show.

Q: Never?

A: Never. I just heard that supposedly they portray a lot that is exaggerated, in that they make it go real fast, or they make the results better than they should be.

Q: Do you ever go out into the field these days?

A: No. If they have a question a question about firearms at the scene, they are able to give me a call, but so far they haven't called yet.

Q: How did you get to be such an expert on firearms?

A: I went through a training process -- it was about a year and a half of on-the-job training. I also did an internship at the Connecticut State Police lab. And in addition to that, I've had classes at the FBI, the California Criminalistics Institute, and other organizations.

Q: What kind of scientific background do you have to have to work in this job?

A: To work in the lab, or even as an evidence specialist, requires a four-year science degree and a year of lab experience.

Q: How often are you called upon to examine firearms?

A: On the average, right now, I get about five firearms a month. My co-worker (Cindee Saito) has about the same amount. That's just firearms. We may get other related cases also.

Q: Do you have to testify about your findings in court?

A: Yes.

Q: Are you aware of your testimony ever leading to anyone's conviction?

A: Sure, but we don't get feedback all the time as far as what's happened in the case, so sometimes our testimony is just part of the case. But I've testified in Honolulu and the outer islands. One of the more interesting cases was in American Samoa. That was very different because they had to translate into Samoan.

Q: What kind of equipment do you use for your job?

A: One of the things we do is to test fire. So we have an indoor range; it's a stainless-steel water tank that we fire into to recover the fired bullets.

Aside from our range and the water tanks, we have other instruments. Mainly the thing we do is we have a comparison microscope. That's to compare known samples with the questioned evidence samples. And the results from that would indicate that the bullet or the cartridge case has been fired from a particular firearm.

Q: Looking at a casing or a bullet can tell you whether it was fired, for example, from a Colt or a Smith & Wesson?

A: When a gun is fired, there's individual marks on the firearm that are transferred onto the cartridge or bullet, and this is the manufacturer's marks. When the firearms are manufactured, they use different types of tools. So these marks are individual, and say that a bullet or cartridge case was fired in a particular firearm, excluding all others.

Q: Do you have a shelf full of firearms catalogs and manuals?

A: Yes, we do.

Q: Do you have beakers of chemicals and all that stuff, too?

A: For chemicals, we use it when we do serial-number restorations, on the gun or anything else that's defaced. We use different type of chemicals to try to bring out the serial number.

Also (we use chemicals) for distance determination, to determine the distance between the firearm and the victim.

We also process the victims' clothing, because what happens when the gun is fired, a lot of residue comes out of the barrel and is deposited on the clothing. So we look at the residue that gets deposited on the clothing, process it chemically, and compare it to test patterns that we obtain from the firearm, to get the approximate distance. That's sometimes important when you have statements that there was a struggle for the gun and the gun just went off, so they expect to find residue on the clothing.

If you don't find residue, that's another story, yeah.

Q: What percentage of cases are actually solved by this type of lab work, versus confessions or shoe-leather kind of detective work?

A: I'm not sure because it's a different situation for every case. And, yeah, even though they have a solid confession, they still want to cross all the t's and dot all the i's, and do everything they can ... to examine all the evidence to support the convictions.

Q: What would be a typical case for you?

A: A typical case ... Maybe if shots were fired, evidence would be recovered; we get the firearm and maybe the cartridge case, we do our exam, test fire the firearm to make sure it works, do some test fires, then attempt to do a comparison between the known test-fired samples and the evidence recovered.

Q: What is the most common type of firearm that you're called upon to examine?

A: Actually, we have a variety of firearms, but the most common type would be the firearms that the police officers carry, whatever that is. Each time the police officer is involved in a shooting, we're required to examine their firearms.

Q: Do you see any trends in crimes involving firearms?

A: In Honoulu, it's not as bad as other big cities as far as firearms-related crimes, so there's no real trends for us right now as far as that goes.

Q: Is there any sort of continuing education that you have to keep up with?

A: Yes. Right now I'm certified in firearms-evidence examination, and also gunshot-residue examination. That's two areas that I'm certified in, and to keep the certification current, I need to attend classes, and also give classes in the area.

I belong to the Association of Firearms and Tool Mark Examiners; they have seminars in different cities -- a weeklong seminar -- and that's where people will present papers or they'll have manufacturers make presentations. So that's where I get most of my continuing education. There are two of us in the lab currently, so we just alternate attending these seminars. Next year we'll be hosting a seminar in Honolulu.

Q: What are your hours on this kind of a job?

A: We work mainly during the day , from 7:45 to 4:30, and then we're on call during the weekends and holiday, when the detectives would need a rush analysis done.

Q: What's your favorite part of the job?

A: When we test evidence that's not usual, that we don't see often, I think that's interesting.

Q: Do you ever go shooting yourself?

A: When I was young I used to go hunting, on the Big Island, and that was my first exposure to firearms.

Q: Do they (HPD supervisors) ever make you go out to the Koko Head firing range?

A: I've been there a few times, some for work, some for recreation, but -- and I think my co-worker agrees -- that if you do shooting every day, you're not that interested to go shooting after work.