The Austin Police Crime Lab, started nine years ago in response to severe delays in DPS forensics analysis turnaround time, is now experiencing it’s own serious backlog.  The reasons?  According to an article in the Austin American Statesman, an increased demand for blood analysis in drunk driving cases, an increase in the collection of forensic evidence in general, and staffing that is the same today as it was nine years ago.  The chronic delays caused Travis County’s 13 criminal court judges and both the District and County Attorneys to request immediate funding from the City Council to hire three new forensic chemists.  It’s considered a band-aid, but the City Council responded with $181,000 for three new hires and lab equipment to ride out the rest of the budget year.  The in-house testing of blood, DNA, fingerprints, ballistic and narcotic samples was aimed at shortening the turnaround time experienced by sending everything to the Department of Public Safety.  Instead, it is now causing the delay of criminal cases.  Since 2008, forensic samples sent to the crime lab has increased 25%.  Astonishingly, the number of blood samples sent to the crime lab over the same period of time rose 355%.  The increases align with a greater push by the Austin Police Department on DWI cases as well as “no refusal”  initiatives which allow officers to obtain blood search warrants on suspected drunk drivers.  The average wait time for blood testing is now 200 days, six times longer than it was three years ago.  The new staffing should ease the current backlog, however, forensic testing is an extremely careful process that takes time.  The hope is that the increased staffing will help ease the bottleneck of pending criminal cases.

Tags: austin drunk driving arrest, austin police, DWI, no refusal

This entry was posted on Friday, March 8th, 2013 at 2:03 pm and is filed under DWI. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.