Most forensic laboratories have a mass identification plan. Far fewer have a reliable way to test it — one that doesn’t require pulling equipment off-site, coordinating logistics for a full deployment exercise, or halting casework to run a simulation. For the DNA unit at Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, that gap became the problem worth solving.
Kelly Behnke is a DNA analyst at Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. In 2022, the unit developed its mass identification plan around a capstone off-site exercise. When it came time to test the plan again — to stress-test the refinements they’d made — Behnke and three colleagues, Alicia Margetts, Todd Cohen, and Brielle [last name not captured in transcript], designed a different kind of test: a tabletop exercise using randomized dice rolls drawn from the mechanics of Dungeons & Dragons.
Behnke presented the exercise at ISHI 36, where she and two colleagues also co-led a Sunday workshop on mass identification plan design. She sat down at the conference to walk through how the method works and where she sees it going.
The Problem With Testing a Plan
The unit’s mass identification plan was built to prepare analysts for deployment scenarios: natural disasters, mass casualty events, any situation requiring rapid, large-scale victim identification. The plan included defined roles, contact lists, and task checklists for each analyst. The first test was a full off-site event. It worked. But running the same exercise again to verify later improvements wasn’t practical.
The tabletop format was the solution. Analysts could walk through the full plan, consult their documentation, and work through the procedures — without equipment, without samples, without leaving the building.
Where the Dice Come In
The randomization element is what distinguishes this exercise from a standard walkthrough. Rather than a scripted scenario with known outcomes, the tabletop uses encounter tables: at defined intervals, a participant rolls a die and a disruption occurs. The D20 — the 20-sided die common to Dungeons & Dragons — determines both what happens and how severe it is.
Behnke described one example from the exercise: an analyst rolls and is told someone was injured. A second roll determines severity. A favorable roll: a glove gets cut, no blood, the analyst continues. A poor roll: the analyst is out of the exercise entirely. The team has to decide, in real time, who fills in and how the plan holds.
Because the dice rolls differ each time, the exercise can be repeated. The plan gets tested against new scenarios without the exercise becoming predictable or rote.
What the Exercise Was Actually Testing
The mass identification plan provides the structure. The randomization tests whether analysts can operate within that structure when things go wrong — because in real deployments, they will.
“We’d love everything to go according to plan, but usually nothing goes according to plan.”
Behnke identified two outcomes the unit found most valuable: the exercise surfaced gaps in the plan that could then be incorporated, and it built analyst confidence in their own capacity to problem-solve under pressure.
“When we did all this randomization, the different individuals had to think outside the box to come up with a solution to something. So it really helped enhance critical thinking and teamwork when you couldn’t use, I don’t know as a correct answer. You had to come up with a solution to something. So we really thought this would help build confidence just in general for the analysts to feel safe. Like, no, I know what to do. I can do this. I can problem solve this.”
Beyond Mass ID: Other Applications
The tabletop approach wasn’t designed only for mass identification exercises. Behnke sees it as applicable to routine training and troubleshooting as well — any situation where an analyst needs to think through a process while managing unexpected variables.
“If you want to sit down with an analyst and just talk through a process, then you can add dice rolls to it and the randomization can happen. So, okay, your maintenance isn’t done. How are you going to do that then? So that’s kind of the aspect we’re going for with the idea that it can be applied to other areas.”
The unit’s Sunday workshop at ISHI 36 extended the conversation to mass identification plan design more broadly. Participants included colleagues from Palm Beach County and Regina Wells from the Kentucky State Police, along with unit manager Julie Sikorski and a QA representative.
The exercise Behnke and her colleagues built came out of a practical constraint: they needed a way to test a plan without the resources a full deployment requires. What they ended up with also turns out to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable to other parts of lab operations. For units looking to stress-test their own procedures without a major logistical lift, the approach is worth a closer look.