The Unified Police Department now runs its own forensics and crime lab out of a converted elementary school in Salt Lake County. The facility handles fingerprint analysis, firearms ballistics and cell phone data extraction.

The in-house lab means detectives no longer wait on outside agencies for key evidence, as first reported by Fox 13 on Friday, Sept. 25. UPD serves several Salt Lake County cities, including Holladay and Millcreek. Cottonwood Heights operates its own separate police department.

Analyst Lauren Koncar told Fox 13 the lab handles DNA processing, fingerprinting and ballistics testing. Analysts can test-fire handguns and rifles in a Bullet Water Recovery System to match shell casings to specific weapons. Koncar said casings are similar to fingerprints, each one distinctive after firing.

"If we have a gun or any other piece of evidence, we're going to DNA process it, we're going to fingerprint it," Koncar said. "We have a lot of the tools here that help us do all of that."

The lab also extracts data from seized cell phones, searching for specific date ranges, text messages and photos.

That capability played a central role in the UPD investigation of Terence Trent Vos. Vos was convicted in March 2025 of first-degree felony aggravated murder for the 2021 shooting death of his girlfriend on Interstate 80.

Initial attempts to pull data from Vos's phone failed. Analysts succeeded in March 2023 using newer software, according to KUTV reporting. That phone evidence helped secure a guilty verdict, and Vos was sentenced in May 2025 to life in prison without parole.

Officer Carrie Rigby, who led the Vos investigation as a UPD violent crimes detective, said having forensic tools in-house changed what her team could find. Without the lab, she said, detectives might not have known certain extraction methods were available.

Rigby is well known in Holladay. At a Holladay City Council meeting in February, Precinct Chief Justin Hoyal presented her with a UPD Incentive Award for a separate investigation. Hoyal said Rigby goes "above and beyond" on every case she handles.

Koncar said the work pays off when detectives tell analysts that a fingerprint they recovered helped close a case.