Houston Chronicle: Dallas-area police must pay for evidence testing

[Heidi]

Sept. 7, 2009, 12:25PM

DALLAS — Dallas County commissioners have decided to stop picking up the $200,000 per year tab for crime lab tests of evidence collected by city police.

For years, the Dallas County District Attorney's Office paid to test evidence collected by local police once the office accepted cases. But county commissioners said that practice must stop as they grapple with a county budget shortfall that once topped $60 million.

"We were eating the cost," Commissioner John Wiley Price told The Dallas Morning News.

Police agencies were supposed to pay for their own tests but stopped doing that over the years for reasons that remain unclear, Dallas County Medical Examiner Dr. Jeffrey Barnard said.

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Dallas Assistant Police Chief Ron Waldrop told The News that the department would not object to paying for the tests "if there's something required to prove someone's guilt or innocence."

However, he said the department might fall back on the state lab.

Police Sgt. Wes Talley in the Dallas suburb of Mesquite said his department probably would stay with the county lab if the fees were nominal. Otherwise, "we could run into problems," he said.

Read more

[TexasObserver]

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