Paul Chambers

Paul Chambers is the Senior Investigator at the Ontario County Public Defender’s Office. He has held this post since the creation of the office in 2010.

His journey to being part of the criminal justice system in upstate New York is an unusual one. He began by studying Chemistry at Portsmouth University. While there he interned at a Forensic Science Laboratory for 9 months detecting explosives on hands to help investigate the IRA bombings in London.

After college he joined Hampshire Constabulary as a police constable in a county police force of about 3000 officers, in 1990 after a nationwide selection process he was transferred for 4 years to the Royal Cayman Islands Police in the Caribbean.

On his return to Hampshire Police, he was promoted to sergeant In his spare time, he took a master’s course in Forensic Archeology at Bournemouth University. He moved to the US in July 2001 and in 2003 he became a Medical Investigator at the Monroe County Medical Examiner’s Office. He attended a course at St Louis Medical School and passed the exam to become a board-certified medico-legal death investigator.

While at the Medical Examiner’s Office he put the knowledge gained from his archeology course to good use, suggesting novel techniques such as Forensic Palynology be applied to cold cases. After about 4 years of working in the Medical Examiner's office, he became a Special Urban Investigator at the Monroe County Public Defender’s Office.

When the Ontario Public Defender's office was created in 2010, he was asked to join them to create their investigation team. During his time there he has organized training courses for investigators from all over NY state.

Interested in the science of interviewing he has worked with Forensic Interview Solutions to help create an online interview course and participates in their scenario-based training using the PEACE method of interviewing.