Cooley Labels Crime Lab Plans Inadequate

Plans for a $96-million regional crime lab are grossly inadequate and threaten to expand a backlog of unsolved murder and sexual assault cases, Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley warned Tuesday.

Cooley said the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department have not proposed enough staff or space to adequately test forensic evidence at their state-funded joint crime lab, which is scheduled to open on the Cal State Los Angeles campus in 2005.

“This is D-day for the crime lab,” Cooley said Tuesday. “They either make a big mistake or they do it right.”

In a letter sent earlier this month to the crime lab’s board of directors, which includes Sheriff Lee Baca and LAPD interim Chief Martin Pomeroy, Cooley criticized the plans and urged the agencies to make changes so the facility is not “obsolete the day it opens.” Later this month, the board will meet to discuss those plans for the use of staff and equipment at the new lab.

LAPD and sheriff’s officials defended their plans, saying that they have prepared sufficiently for the new lab.

Cooley faults the Los Angeles Police Department for not setting aside sufficient space and staff for DNA testing, a mistake that he said could hurt prosecutions of criminal cases and result in more rapes and murders with no perpetrator apprehended. The district attorney’s office relies on testing of crime scene evidence for use in trials.

“If we’re standing in court, with the whole world knowing about DNA technology, and some agency hasn’t gathered the forensics evidence and had it tested in a timely manner, then the case will probably fail,” Cooley said. “DNA technology is the ultimate in crime prevention, and if anyone doesn’t appreciate that ... they are not doing their job.”

According to the district attorney’s office, the LAPD has projected about 12,500 square feet and 34 employees for its DNA section in the new lab, which will house separate facilities for the LAPD and Sheriff’s Department. But Cooley said the LAPD’s DNA section will need 72 criminalists to accommodate requests for testing and to make a dent in the backlog of unsolved cases. The LAPD’s current lab near downtown Los Angeles now receives 60 to 80 requests for DNA testing each month and already has an annual backlog of at least 400 unsolved cases, he said, and the needs will be even greater in the future.

Cooley also said the LAPD is trying to squeeze too many types of testing into the new lab and should save space by keeping its blood alcohol, narcotics and toxicology testing at its current facility.

LAPD Capt. Paul Enox, who heads the current crime lab, said he gladly would have as many DNA criminalists as the city agrees to provide. But in the past, he said, the city has not budgeted as many criminalists as the LAPD has requested. “My plan is consistent with what resources I have been able to get,” Enox said.

Enox said he also can run two or three different shifts of DNA testing in the new building to save square footage. “I consider it to be the DNA field of dreams,” he said. “If they give them to me, I’ll find space for them.”

Cooley said that the Sheriff’s Department’s plans for DNA testing are on target, but that its projections for firearms analysis are lacking. The department has only proposed 15 examiners and two technicians and should have at least 26, he said.

Harley Sagara, assistant director of the sheriff’s crime lab, which is now on Beverly Boulevard, said the department’s proposals are flexible and allow for future changes.

“We believe that we have planned sufficiently and we have growth built into the plans,” Sagara said. “If the need for more firearms space is required, we could shrink other sections.”

The regional crime lab is designed to ease crowding at the current labs, expand forensics testing, improve evidence collection and serve as a training center for future criminalists.

But since the county was awarded the $96 million in state funding for the 213,000-square-foot building, the project has been delayed by disagreements over how much personnel, equipment and space to share.

Now the project is back on track, officials said, and is scheduled to break ground in October 2003.