Computer forensics facility expands space at Hoover center

The National Computer Forensics Institute is expanding its space at the Hoover Public Safety Center in order to train more law enforcement officers from across the country.

The facility will also provide training for prosecutors and judges on cyber crime trends and investigative methods. For many years, it has operated with five classrooms but recently added a sixth one and now is in the process of adding a seventh classroom, said Beau Brown, deputy director of the institute.

When the facility opened in 2008, and for many years later, it operated on a budget of about $4 million, which enabled it to train about 100 people a year, said Ben Bass, the U.S. Secret Service special agent in charge who leads the institute.

Due to the program’s success, Congress has boosted the budget significantly, raising it to $34.3 million last year and $42.9 million this year, Bass said.

With the increased budget, the institute was able to train 3,718 state and local officials last year, plus another 410 federal agents and members of the National Guard, Bass said. The institute’s staff also has increased from six people to 26, he said.

The new classroom and office space currently being added will enable the facility to train about 5,500 people a year, Brown said.

Before this institute was created, local and state officers usually had to send cyber crime evidence to the Secret Service for examination, which created long delays, Bass said.

The FBI reported there were 791,790 complaints of suspected internet crime in 2020 — an increase of more than 300,000 from 2019 — and reported losses exceeding $4.2 billion.

This institute, a partnership between the Secret Service, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Alabama Office of Prosecution Services, Alabama District Attorneys Association and city of Hoover, provides training and equipment for officers across the country so they can examine the evidence themselves and speed up investigations, he said.

Since 2008, more than 18,000 people have been trained, 68% of them within the past five years, Bass said. The number of digital evidence exams conducted by officers trained at the facility has risen from 40,000 in 2017 to 121,000 last year, he said.

About 24% of last year’s exams involved crimes against children, while 21% were for violent crimes, 16% were related to deaths and 14% were for drug investigations, Bass said.

“We’re making a difference. We’re getting more equipment and training out on the front lines in all kinds of cases,” Bass said. “This formula is working. It is working significantly,” he said. “If we had the ability to do more, it would have an even bigger impact.”

His goal is to keep growing the budget so more people can be trained on how to use digital technology to solve crimes, he said. “It needs to be $420 million at least,” he said, but his shorter-term goal is to get a $100 million budget.

Hoover and Shelby County have been great partners in making this expansion possible, Bass and Brown said.

Shelby County has provided $250,000 toward the expansion, and Hoover is helping by reshuffling some of its personnel to make room for the expansion and helping with the remodeling, Brown said. The Secret Service also is providing funding for some of the technology upgrades, he said.

The goal is to get the new classroom and office space ready by June and hold the first classes there in July, said Greg Knighton, the city of Hoover’s economic developer.

The city and county benefit from the millions of dollars being poured into hotel stays, restaurants and other spending while people are in town. The classes range from five days to five weeks, Bass said.

Alabama as a whole is gaining significantly from the training. From 2017-21, 532 officers, prosecutors and judges from Alabama have been trained at the institute, which is third most in the country by number but by far first in the country when considered on a per capita basis, Bass said.

Law enforcement agencies in Alabama also have received more than $4.4 million in equipment and software from the institute and were able to complete at least 18,197 forensic exams with that equipment, he said.