Specialist Crime

Gary Pugh, BSc, MSc, CSci, CChem, MRSC

Director of Forensic Services, Specialist Crime Directorate

Key responsibilities:

• To provide leadership of Forensic Services and develop and implement a strategy for Forensic Services that supports the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) to achieve its corporate objectives.
• To promote the use of Forensic Services within the MPS ensuring that awareness is appropriate to roles within the management structure and ensure that the Forensic Services are integrated into solving policing problems.
• To ensure that the delivery of Forensic Services within the MPS contributes to the achievement of MPS objectives, reflects MPS priorities and there are demonstrable year on year improvements in efficiency and effectiveness.
• To represent the MPS on policy and strategic issues relevant to Forensic Services at national and international level and to provide advice on forensic science matters to senior officers and managers within the MPS.
• To provide professional leadership of Forensic Services within the MPS through clarifying roles and responsibilities and ensuring that the highest professional standards are demonstrated and maintained.
• To manage the Forensic Services Directorate within the delegated authorities for staff, running costs and capital.
• To develop and implement a development programme that underpins the long-term contribution of Forensic Services to MPS objectives and supports the MPS position as a world leader in the use of the Forensic Services.

Rewarding aspects of your role:

"The challenge of leading the forensic contribution in one of the most high profile jobs in the forensic business and the direct contribution that forensic services makes to tackling crime in London.

"I have the pleasure of working with a highly committed, professional and effective group of staff."

Additional Information:

Gary Pugh is a chemistry graduate who joined the Home Office Forensic Science Service in 1979 and spent 10 years as an operational forensic scientist.

He was part of a team that formed the Forensic Science Service and established agency status in 1991. He has acted as a consultant to Her Majesty's Inspectorate for the ‘Under the Microscope’ Inspection and the Homicide Thematic Inspection of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS). He was part of the team that introduced new approaches to the presentation of forensic evidence and he has a keen interest in the interpretation of forensic evidence. Gary was a member of the Board of the National Crime Faculty and helped to establish the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes Working Group on the Crime Scene.

He joined the MPS in May 2001 on secondment as Director of Forensic Services and took up the post permanently in March 2004.

In March 2008 he became the chair of the National DNA Database Strategy Board and in November 2008 became Visiting Professor of Forensic Science to Northumbria University.