D.C. crime lab closer to reality
By: Bill Myers
Examiner Staff Writer
October 27, 2009
The District's long-delayed $140 million crime laboratory has cleared a vital hurdle after a city appellate board turned aside a complaint by a local builder, protesting the contract to a rival.
Tompkins Builders had claimed it could offer a crime lab cheaper and faster than rival Whiting-Turning Contracting Co., but D.C.'s contract appeals board ruled against it. The way is now clear for the city to break ground on its own lab.
"We probably are just going to let it lie," Tompkins Vice President George Kreis told The Examiner.
That doesn't mean the company is happy with the outcome.
"It just doesn't seem right to award this job to an out-of-town contractor for millions of dollars more money. If that's not a mistake, I'm not sure what is," Kreis said.
Tompkins had initially gotten the contract overturned, but the city appealed. It delayed by an additional six months a project that has already taken nearly a decade to get under way. Without its own crime lab, D.C.'s forensic technicians are scattered throughout the city, many of them in unsafe, crumbling buildings. Until this year, the District had to rely on the FBI to test its massive backlog of DNA evidence from unsolved crimes.
"This has been too long a delay," Attorney General Peter Nickles said. "In private practice, we see delays like this as unacceptable, and I'm trying to instill that kind of thought process in D.C. government. But obviously I haven't gotten far enough yet."
Other jurisdictions are already using modern techniques like DNA testing for impressive results. Virginia last year celebrated 5,000 "hits" on its DNA database. Some jurisdictions are using DNA evidence on smaller crimes, like burglary. In 2000, Virginia officials found that up to 40 percent of rapists had started their criminal career as burglars.
