Photo Op: Chinese Officers Visit Meriden Police

Chinese police officials on a week-long forensic science course met with Meriden Police Thursday morning, to talk with officers about procedures and tour the department.

The group, made up of about seven men and one woman from the city of Hangzhou, near Shanghai, was led by Henry C. Lee, the founder of and a professor at the University of New Haven's School of Criminal Justice. Lee, a high-profile forensic scientist, has instructed a number of Meriden Police officers through the years, and is a former director of the state's forensic lab in Meriden, which the group visited first Thursday.

The Chinese officers asked questions of Meriden officers through Lee, focusing mostly on evidence collection, storage and processing. Familiar with the lab's flow, Lee lectured in Chinese. 

"I worked a lot of cases here before... I wanted to show them a modern local police department," Lee said of why he brought the delegation to Meriden.

Hangzhou is a city populated by about 9 million people and has about 15,000 police officers, according to the group – a dramatic difference from Meriden's 124 officers in a city of 60,000.