TOPEKA, Kansas – It was a backlog keeping bad guys from being locked up behind bars, but the attorney general says the state’s crime lab if finally catching up.
It’s been a frustrating problem for cops and courts across Kansas. The state’s crime lab has been buried with tens of thousands of requests to process DNA evidence, and the backlog of work for their scientists has stalled hundreds of cases. But Attorney General Steve Six says the situation is improving.
With the increasing popularity of using DNA evidence to prosecute cases as well as a new law requiring most people arrested in Kansas submit a DNA sample, scientists at the state’s crime lab have had a hard time keeping up.
This time last year, there were over 38,000 DNA samples waiting to be processed. That number is now down 70 percent to just over 11,000 samples and officials are on pace to erase the backlog entirely by February.
“The problem was the last two submissions had taken months and they were critical cases,” said Chief Dan Kinning with the Hillsboro Police Department earlier this year.
When KSN spoke to the Hillsboro Police Dept back in January, officials were waiting on evidence from a handful of rape cases to come back from the crime lab, including one from 2008. The chief says all their problems with evidence coming back from the crime lab have disappeared.
“They have greatly improved,” he said. “We've got all our evidence back. The evidence we've submitted since then have come back in a timely fashion. Things have greatly improved.”
Attorney General Steve Six says his office worked with the crime lab to find out what they needed and then lobbied the legislature to give it to them. Six says as cops and courts rely more and more on DNA evidence, it’s time for the state to look into building a new crime lab so crime fighters in the future can make better use of the technology available today.
Wichita wasn’t affected by the backlog at the state crime lab because Sedgwick County has its own lab for processing DNA samples.
