Fenty scraps crime lab deal after appeals loss
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
June 1, 2009
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| The District’s plans for a crime lab have been pushed back again thanks to a ruling by an appeals board that Mayor Adrian Fenty skirted city contracting laws. (photos.com) |
Mayor Adrian Fenty’s long-stalled efforts to build a 21st-century crime laboratory here hit another snag after an appeals board ruled that the mayor skirted city contracting laws in handing out a $133 million deal to a contractor.
In a one-line Thursday letter to Council Chairman Vincent Gray, Fenty announced that he was withdrawing a proposed contract that would have given construction firm Whiting-Turner permission to build the District’s crime lab. The letter comes barely three weeks after Fenty announced the contract, amid much fanfare, calling the lab “our most important public safety, public health and homeland security project.”
The appeal came from Tompkins Builders, which claimed that it could deliver the lab faster and cheaper than Baltimore-based Whiting-Turner.
It’s yet another stumble in the city’s multimillion-dollar efforts to create its own DNA lab. The Examiner has written extensively about D.C.’s DNA woes. Without a functioning DNA lab, city law enforcement officials are at the mercy of the FBI lab at Quantico to help process forensic evidence. Nearly 4,000 unsolved homicides and untold thousands of rapes remain on the city’s books, with the evidence moldering in the District’s crumbling evidence warehouse.
While some nearby jurisdictions like Arlington are using DNA evidence to catch simple cat burglars, D.C. officials are still at a loss to figure out whether — and how many — active serial rapists or killers are prowling District streets.
Mayoral spokeswoman Mafara Hobson declined comment Friday.
The collapse of yet another lab initiative has drawn the ire of Councilman Phil Mendelson, D-at large, chairman of the Public Safety Committee.
“I am extremely concerned that the situation means additional delay for the Consolidated Forensics Laboratory,” he wrote in a May 22 letter to Fenty’s top contracting officer. “This is a very important project for public safety.”
