(Alameda County) Shorthanded Oakland police crime lab can't keep up

by Matthai Kuruvila

The Oakland Police Department's crime lab is so overwhelmed with requests for evidence analysis, it has been unable to process more than 3,500 orders that could help solve homicides, sex assaults and other crimes committed in the city, the Alameda County civil grand jury found.

At one point in 2011, police acknowledged that the crime lab had 650 unsolved sexual assault cases and 330 unsolved homicides in which there was evidence "directly related to the crime" that remained untested, the grand jury reported.

Understaffing, inadequate facilities and high demand contributed to the backlog, and the city's unusual refusal to contract with other agencies to help with evidence processing has exacerbated the problem, according to the report issued this month.

Many victims have been left to wonder whether their cases will ever be solved, the report said. Others have seen cases drag on.

Angeleter Pringle's son, Abram, 22, was kidnapped and shot during a carjacking in October. He died later at Highland Hospital. Police technicians recovered fingerprints from the car, but it was only last week that results came back, she said.

Delays on such basic police work, said Pringle, 60, "means that the city doesn't give a damn about these young people who are getting killed out here on the streets."

The Pringles even offered to pay for the fingerprint processing.

"They said no," Pringle said.

Lack of funding
Oakland's crime lab is chronically underfunded, the report found. Its 22 technical staffers are well trained and highly regarded but work in an antiquated 1950s lab downtown that - with advances in technology and an increase in staffing - has greatly outgrown its space of 6,100 square feet.

The crew is responsible for examining crime scene evidence and testifying in criminal cases prosecuted in court. The forensic evidence the lab processes can identify suspects, help convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent.

Oakland's lab is one of two major crime labs in Alameda County. The other, run by the county, processes about 900 forensic cases annually, many for cities that contract for its services. It employs 30 people in a 10,000-square-foot office.

The Oakland lab is divided into many units. One of its units, forensic firearms, received 609 exam requests in 2011 and processed 230 while its backlog increased to 1,871.

"It's horrible," said Councilman Larry Reid, who represents East Oakland, a part of the city disproportionately affected by crime. "You need the crime lab if in fact you're going to solve the crime that's being committed."

Fewer cases
In some instances, particularly involving drug offenses, the Oakland crime lab's burden has decreased substantially. That's because there are fewer officers out on the street.

In 2008, when the department had a record 837 officers, there were 6,061 cases sent to the crime lab. There have been layoffs, retirements and transfers to other departments of nearly 200 officers since then. Partly as a result, there were only 2,864 cases sent to the drug lab last year, according to the department's annual report.

Sgt. Christopher Bolton, chief of staff to Police Chief Howard Jordan, said drug arrests and reports are largely driven by small squads of officers known as crime reduction teams.

There were six crime reduction teams just a few years ago, and now there are just two, he said.

"We have not made as many narcotics-related arrests in the recent past primarily due to a lack of street-level enforcement squads and units," Bolton said.

Lack of action
The grand jury found that the city has taken "little action to address the lab's chronic backlogs and staffing needs."

The grand jury recommended that Oakland consolidate its crime lab with the one run by the Alameda County Sheriff's Department, an idea that's been discussed for decades.

Bolton, Reid and Councilwoman Pat Kernighan, the chair of the council's public safety committee, said it is too early to tell whether that is a good idea.