Secretary-General’s Report 2020-21
Before getting into the body of my report I want to pay tribute to two of our members who have both died of COVID19 related illnesses in the early days of the pandemic.
Dr Eddie Josse, an expert in forensic medicine, was an active member of the Academy for over fifty years, was elected onto our Council on two occasions and attended most of our events with his wife, Yvonne and so we feel his loss, and will do more so when we are able to return to our in-person events where there are opportunities for good social conversations.
Terry Keating was a former Metropolitan Police Officer who, after he retired, became involved as a civilian in the Specialist Crime Group. Terry was a longstanding member of BAFS and joined the Council to help us develop our website; he remained a member until he died at the end of March this year. Terry was always on hand with balanced advice to the committee and we will miss his good humour that lightened our meetings. We plan to be able to commemorate them both at an event when things are back to normal.
Since the last AGM in October of last year the Executive Council has met on four occasions with our President, Tracy Alexander in the chair. Last year we decided to regularize our AGM to this time in future ongoing. We had planned to have it coincide with either a Lund or Ormrod lectures, and certainly we would look to do that in the future, because of the need to respond to the pandemic through arranging virtual meetings, we have planned a series of online events throughout the autumn for our members and visitors until we can get back together.
Dr Andrew Forrester, our journal editor, has significantly increased the standing of Medicine, Science and the Law. With over 300 papers submitted annually we can only publish around 25% of them and that also means that the quality of journal articles is increasing over time. I would specially like to thank Andrew for the large amount of work he has been undertaking on our behalf.
Our decision to institute a Medical prize has been excellent and last December we awarded prizes to Sidharthan Llangovan of Queen Mary University of London, and Thomas Harrison from the Northern General Hospital in Sheffield. Sidharthan talked about the effect of spit hoods on breathing during exercise and Thomas gave us a presentation on the forensic opportunities from whole genome sequencing of the tuberculosis bacterium. Again because of the current circumstances we have delayed the examination until March, and we will shortly be advertising this opportunity to interested parties. We award two legal prizes annually but, because of the delay in these examinations, they are yet to be announced. The Forensic Science Prize for the best Masters in Forensic Science Project was awarded to Poppy Lawrence for her work of developing fingermarks on pangolin scales.
In November last year we had a joint meeting with the Chartered Society of Forensic Sciences, held in the medical school in Charterhouse Square, on the Judicial System and Forensic Science, and Jo Millington delighted us all with her informative talk on blood pattern analysis. Jo will be talking on this subject to us on 3[rd] December so please check the website and join us for that.
In January of this year we held a joint meeting with the Royal Society of Medicine on Bias, which was well-attended, and several members spoke. We have another joint meeting planned for this coming January, but we are yet to decide whether this will be in person or online.
Our programme has been significantly impacted because of the pandemic. Our Family Law Day had to be abandoned for the second time. Tracy and Kristiina Reed had spent a lot of time organizing speakers for this event which had to be cancelled previously because of low registration and again because of the pandemic. We had planned an interesting talk by a journalist on Jack the Ripper, and our popular Friend’s Dinner when we had planned a talk on the case of Restivo, a hair fetishist. The dinners are one of the highlights of our year and we hope we can reinstate them in 2021. In the meantime, like today, we are down to Zoom meetings. While not being able to replace our normal event programme, they are proving successful opportunities to continue to offer educational opportunities for our members and to interest others in the Academy, especially students. Tracy has worked hard in organizing a series of events to take us to the end of the year: Leslie Millin gave a talk on Inquests, Angela Shaw will be talking after this meeting on gun shot residue, and Jo Millington in December. Don’t worry if you miss any of these events because we are recording them, and they will be available on the website.
Finally I want to thank our President, Tracy, for the hard work she has put in in what has turned out to be a difficult year; I hope that next year will be different and we can offer more social events in the future, and perhaps continue some online offering now that we are all familiar with the technology. I would particularly like to thank Lesley Nott, our administrator, who works tirelessly, successfully managing the events and administering our meetings, and Alvaro Varella Morillas who helps and the website and promoting us through social media. And of course, thank you also to our members, who continue to support us, and members of Council who are the driving force behind the events we all enjoy.
Denise Syndercombe Court
AD Ic CIEN ME & EXPE RE ACCOUNT for r •nd•d 31 DOCts#r 20 2019 2020 INCOME 8482 Subscriplions 8092 15227 Royalties 18742 7065 Dlnners- FrferKI$ 2637 Events 33411 EXPENDYfuRE 1697 Student Prizes 954 813 Committee Expenses 68 7843 Dinnws- Fri&nd5 Events 2344 48 PrlnJng, Slationery & Postsge 198 Symp08ium SFonsotship 389 Insurance 7760 Staff, PAYE & Agency Costs 12106 6355 MS&LCosts 6000 547 700 ACntanaY 700 Website 36 23079 -2232 Surp1 forthe year (2019- Dofi¢lt) 3755 BAFS Annual Accounts 3111212020
BR1 CE 2019 2020 FIXED ASSErs Office Equipment 694 Les5 . Deprecbation 1709 CURRENT ASSErs Cash at Bank- Current Account Debtors & Prepayments 80838 83878 80838 . CURRENT UABILITIES Creditor8 725 80113 83153 80807 84562 REPRESE1ED BY: Balance a$ at 1st January 2020 Add '. Suwus for the year 12019- D8fKf() 83039 -2232 80807 3755 80807 We approve these aCunts and confirm that we have made aVlable all the relevant records and infomation for the preparation thereof. SIGN DATE AIRMAN - ESIDENT TRACY ALEXANDER SIGN DATE EASU RY BAFS Annual Account$ 3111212020
BRITISH ACADEMY OF FORENSIC SCIENCES Year ending 31" December 2020 BAFS Annual Account5 3111212020
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