HELENA — Law enforcement officers and prosecutors are asking the Legislature to fund a satellite crime lab in eastern Montana to help speed up evidence processing and save some officers from having to drive evidence across the state to be analyzed.
Republican Rep. Dale Mortensen, of Billings, is sponsoring House Bill 512, which would appropriate $5.8 million to build a crime lab in Billings or up to $340,000 to lease a facility. The bill includes $1.8 million for salaries and operating expenses for a two-year period, Lee Newspapers of Montana reported.
Mortensen told the House Appropriations Committee that officers in Glendive have to make a 1,040-mile round trip to take evidence to the crime lab in Missoula.
“That’s a lot of windshield time for our law enforcement officers,” Mortensen said Tuesday. “It creates inefficiencies by forcing them to spend more time traveling and less time doing their jobs.”
Rep. Kim Dudik, D-Missoula, asked if the delays could be solved by expanding services at the Missoula lab.
Deputy Yellowstone County Attorney Dan Schwarz said having a satellite lab in Billings would be much more efficient because of the increasing numbers of drug and other crimes in eastern Montana, due in part to the increasing number of people working in the Bakken oil fields.
Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry tells the Flathead Beacon that backlogs at the crime lab can lead to delays in filing charges.
The crime lab “does a good job with what they’ve got to work with,” Curry said. “They’ve been understaffed and underfunded for a long time.”
Phil Kinsey, Forensic Science Division administrator at the Forensic Science Laboratory in Missoula, told the Beacon the number of cases their scientists have to study has risen from about 5,300 annually in 2010 to about 8,100 last year.
The House Appropriations Committee didn’t act on the bill Tuesday.