Prosecutors blindsided
Historically offered at no cost, move has agencies scrambling to adjust
The Texas Department of Public Safety announces it will charge law enforcement agencies for forensic work, leaving counties little time to adjust their budgets.
Texas prosecutors say they were blindsided by the Texas Department of Public Safety’s surprise announcement that the agency will begin charging law enforcement agencies for forensic work conducted in state crime labs, giving local governments scant time to adjust their budgets.
Historically, DPS has offered forensic services to law enforcement agencies at no cost. The impact will be felt primarily by police and sheriffs in rural Texas cities and counties which are dependent on the DPS labs because they do not have their own crime labs, or resources to outsource forensic testing that is critical to criminal investigations, officials said.
Shannon Edmonds, director of governmental relations at the Texas District and County Attorney Association, said more than a dozen district and county attorneys have contacted the association with concerns about DPS’s failure to inform them of the new charges.
“They’re pretty steamed,” said Edmonds, whose 6,000-member group includes 330 elected prosecutors. “Texas prosecutors have always enjoyed a good working relationship with the DPS, but right now some of them are feeling a little blindsided by this news.”
DPS Director Steven McCraw made the announcement late Thursday, explaining the Texas Legislature had directed the agency to collect up to $11.5 million in forensic fees beginning Sept. 1 to cover a sizable budget cut made to agency funding. McCraw said the Legislature provided the DPS crime lab system $63 million to operate during the next two fiscal years, down more than 10 percent from the $75 million provided during the last two-year biennium funding cycle.
“It was never discussed or debated in public, and the DPS obviously knew about it but they sat on this information for two months before they notified local governments, and after those governments had begun their budgeting process,” said Edmonds, noting in many counties the fiscal years begin in September or October.
Polk County District Attorney Lee Hon, whose office is in the county seat of Livingston north of Houston, noted there are five law enforcement agencies in the county that rely on DPS forensic labs.
“We’re definitely concerned, and that stems from what we don’t know about the new policy,” the prosecutor said. “The DPS crime lab is a very valuable resource to counties such as ours. In a wide variety of cases — DWI, drugs, sexual crimes including those against children — we depend almost exclusively on the DPS crime lab in Houston, and we have a lot of faith in them.”
Lawmakers blamed
Hon said budget workshops are underway in Livingston County, but county officials were not aware they may have to consider paying for forensic services DPS previously provided at no cost.
“We’re right in the middle of our budget (hearings) for the next fiscal year ... and I can assure you there is no line item in the sheriff’s department budget for forensic services,” Hon said.
On Friday, DPS issued a statement saying the agency was not consulted on the budget cuts by the Legislature which were added late in this year’s session and finalized about a month ago.
“As with all legislation passed by our state leaders, we diligently began the process of reviewing this new legislative requirement (once we became aware of it) to determine the specific impacts to the department in order to take the necessary steps to comply,” DPS said. “As soon as we were able to determine the necessary course by the department, we developed a plan to implement it.”
DPS referred any additional questions about the cuts to the Legislature.
State Senator John Whitmire, D-Houston, questioned the budget priorities of state leaders.
“The bottom line is elections matter,” Whitmire said. “The Legislature oversees the DPS, and the leadership has decided spending $800 million on the border is the top priority and everything comes next including efficient driver’s license offices and forensic services to small communities.”
DPS operates crime labs at 14 locations, and has seen dramatic increases in both the number of requests for testing as well as its backlog in completing the tests. In a January 2016 survey of district and county court judges by the Texas Center for the Judiciary, 96 percent of the judges who responded said waits for lab results led to court delays, according to a report by the Legislative Budget Board.
Completion times for DPS testing has varied from 2013 through 2015, with DNA testing increasing to an average of 150 days. DPS had backlogs in 2015 for the testing of drugs, blood alcohol, latent finger prints, toxicology, gunshot residue and firearms, according to the January 2017 budget board report.
City has backlogs
In Houston, city police and several other smaller agencies submit their evidence for testing to the Houston Forensic Science Center, a non-profit city corporation that replaced the troubled Houston Police Department crime lab.
The new Houston lab has received generally high marks from outside consultants for upgrading lab operations and employees’ training as well as speeding up the work product. Still, the city lab currently has backlogs in both DNA (71 days) and latent finger prints (180 days), agency officials confirmed. The lab receives funding from the city to test evidence submitted by HPD, but charges fees to outside police agencies for those services.
“HFSC believes that quality forensic services must also be timely,” Dr. Peter Stout, president and CEO of the city lab, said in a statement. “Our commitment to our clients is to have all our work done within 30 days or less from the time of request.”