Crime lab move could save law enforcement thousands

JACKSON, Tenn. — Local law enforcement react to a possible change in where evidence in processed in West Tennessee. There is talk of moving the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s crime lab out of Memphis and into a new facility in Jackson.

It is a change that is garnering praise from many West Tennessee law enforcement leaders who said it could save their departments thousands of dollars a year.

“It’s just a continuous cycle of waste, man hours and overtime,” Gibson County Sheriff Paul Thomas said.

After any major crime in Tennessee, evidence is processed by at one of three TBI crime labs.

“Fingerprints examinations, gun ballistics, anything that we have gets stored here in evidence and is sent down to Memphis every other week,” Sheriff Thomas said.

For the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office, and many other departments across rural West Tennessee, that drive down I-40 has taken a toll.

“We’re without an employee for half the day,” Thomas said. “Someone like Memphis Police can miss someone for a few hours to run to the crime lab and back but for us it’s tough.”

But that could all change with the possibility of the crime lab moving to the Hub City. Police said it would cut down on their overtime and help with back-logged evidence.

“The current crime lab is overrun with evidence,” Sheriff Thomas said. “It’s not large enough, it probably wasn’t built large enough originally.”

With constant delays officers said it is putting the brakes on the judicial system.

“I have officers and these other departments have officers that we pay overtime to go to court,” Thomas said. “Only to get there and then find out it’s going to be re-set because the evidence isn’t back from the lab.”

Officers said without a change to the crime lab soon, rural West Tennessee will suffer.

“I don’t know that necessarily crime is any greater in West Tennessee now than when the lab was built maybe law enforcement is just more active,” Sheriff Thomas.

The new $25 million crime lab in Jackson is part of the proposed 2016-17 budget. If approved in July, design and construction could start soon after.

The new facility is expected to be 40,000 square-feet. A possible location in Jackson has yet been determined.