Austin City Council approved $5.8-million in spending to help support Austin’s DNA crime lab.
The money is for four separate contracts with outside labs to aid Austin’s. The city lab’s Executive Director Dana Kadavy said those contracts are there to make sure they can handle the 2-4 years worth of work.
The lab is still trying to loose itself from the controversy surrounding of the Sex Assault kit backlog where several were left languishing in storage for a number of years. Kadavy told City leaders every back logged kit has been sent off for testing but, admitted they still have around 1,300 kits that need further review and upload to the national crime lab data base known as CODIS.
Kadavy told Council the process needs to be expedited, adding there funding for this. “We’re working with the Department of justice, who is going to fund this effort and we’re going to be able to truly significantly impact how quickly we can do that part of the process.” Before that, Kadavy hopes to have a full plan to deal with those kits, ready for council in a few weeks.
(Photo:Shutterstock/Likoper)
