BIDDEFORD — On Wednesday afternoon, in a conference room on the second floor of the Biddeford Police Department, Sgt. Steve Gorton snapped on a pair of powder-blue gloves like a doctor readying for surgery.

He was eyeing a circular, white pill that was resting on the table. It was acetaminophen ”“ the harmless, over-the-counter pain reliever found in Tylenol. But in the field, officers never know what they’re dealing with, so Gorton followed protocol as he prepared to show off one of the department’s newest acquisitions: the TruNarc Handheld Narcotics Analyzer.

The blue, plastic-shelled device, made by Thermo Fisher Scientific, uses a laser to identify dozens of drugs. It’s slightly larger than a smart phone and weighs about the same, but with a $20,000 price tag, the TruNarc is more than 30 times as expensive as an iPhone 6.

The BPD bought the device in December 2014 and has been using it since January, Dep. Chief JoAnne Fisk said Wednesday.

“It’s not cheap,” she said, but neither is the current process of drug identification, which the BPD still has to go through, as the courts in Maine have yet to accept the TruNarc as a trusted method of drug identification. It’s not because the device is inaccurate, said Fisk; it’s just because it’s relatively new.

“In a lot of other states (TruNarc results are) accepted for court work,” she said.

In an email Thursday, Fisk said now that the BPD has been using the device for a couple of months, the department’s next step will be to reach out to the York County District Attorney’s Office and the courts with the intention of convincing them to accept TruNarc results for purposes of prosecution. Right now, the device simply helps the department make arrests and determine charges more rapidly, she said.

“It’s a pretty neat tool,” said Fisk. “Now it’s just about getting everybody on board with its usage.”

Fisk explained that, currently, every time the BPD ”“ or any police department in Maine ”“ sends a drug sample to the state’s drug testing lab, it costs the department $700. Furthermore, the state lab is so busy that it often takes two months or longer to get the results, she said.

The TruNarc, on the other hand, delivers results in seconds.

Gorton ”“ the only BPD officer who has been certified to use the device so far ”“ said Wednesday that he’s not aware of any other local police forces in the state using the TruNarc except for the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency. A broader state adoption of the device could not only help other departments as it has Biddeford, he said, but it could lessen the burden on the state’s lab, too.

“We wanted to be proactive,” Gorton said, when asked why the BPD purchased the TruNarc. It was purchased using drug forfeiture asset fees, added Fisk, at “no cost to (Bidde-           ford) citizens.”

Biddeford Police Chief Roger Beaupre sung the TruNarc’s praises at a March 3 City Council meeting.

“It effectively gives law enforcement a mobile narcotics test lab,” he said, adding that it’s “easy to use,” and safer and less destructive than traditional field drug testing methods.

Before the TruNarc, Beaupre said, officers in the field relied on a guess-and-check method of drug testing, which required extensive handling of drug samples and used up most or all of the sample, thereby destroying valuable evidence.

“Traditional field testing was singular and destructive,” he said. “If the test was negative for one substance, the sample couldn’t be tested for different substances.”

Gorton stressed the safety benefits of the TruNarc, as well. “I hate opening bags,” he said, and with the TruNarc, “you can test cocaine (for example) right through the bag. … The less you have to handle a substance the better.”

So, how does the TruNarc actually work?

Jerry Mullin, an analytical chemist and chemistry professor at the University of New England in Biddeford, provided an answer to that question on Friday.

The TruNarc relies on a method known as Raman spectroscopy, said Mullin, which “is a type of chemical measurement that uses a laser … to excite vibrational transitions in a molecule.”

“Different molecules will have characteristic spectra based on the nature of the bonds and the atoms involved,” he went on. “(It’s) much like a fingerprint in terms of providing evidence for the presence of certain compounds.”

Essentially, what all of that means is that different compounds will respond differently to being hit with the TruNarc’s laser, and those responses are recorded in the form of a graph.

Thermo Scientific holds a library of known samples and what their graphs look like. So, if a sample’s graph matches one in the library, the device has determined, or made a very-educated guess as to, what the sample is. The process is similar to matching a criminal’s fingerprints to the fingerprints of someone already in a fingerprint database.

Gorton explained that the TruNarc doesn’t always find a match for a sample. Even as he tested acetaminophen on Wednesday, the device correctly identified the drug as “Acetaminophen (Paracetamol)” but also reported, “Warning: Cannot rule out presence of narcotic.”

When the device is sure there’s a narcotic present, it reports, “Alarm” followed by the drug’s name, he said, and when it knows there are none, it reports, “Clear.”

“We like the ability to say this is not something, too,” said Gorton.

 As the specific makeup of drugs keep changing, Gorton said Thermo Scientific keeps updating its library of graphs. And keeping the TruNarc up-to-date is as easy as plugging it into a computer and downloading the new library, he said. The device also charges when plugged into a computer.

In terms of the device’s overall accuracy, Mullin said “based on the few studies” he has read, the TruNarc seems “accurate in terms of identifying the presence of a compound, but not 100 percent.”

But that’s the case for any chemical test, he said, and it’s important to note that no one test can “provide conclusive evidence of the presence or absence of a particular compound.”

Mullin said the methods the state’s lab uses to identify drugs, such as gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy and infrared spectroscopy, are “more established” but not necessarily more accurate.

Although Mullin might not be on board with the TruNarc as the be-all and end-all method of drug identification, that’s not to say he doesn’t believe it has a place in law enforcement.

“The advantage of this device is that it’s handheld, easily portable and non-destructive. … A big advantage is that it can scan the sample without direct contact with the sample, so it minimizes any cross-contamination,” he said. “It can scan through transparent plastic bags or glass.”

Whether the courts eventually hold as much faith in the TruNarc as the BPD does or they err on the side of caution and stick to what’s tried-and-true ”“ albeit time-consuming ”“ remains to be seen.

But, as of now, one thing’s for sure: The TruNarc is an innovative, powerful and effective field tool for police officers, and the BPD is proud to call one its own.

— Staff Writer Angelo J. Verzoni can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 329 or averzoni@journaltribune.com.