Beef Empire Days   BED – Event Coverage Community Guide Honor Flight SW Kansas Pro-Am Youth In Excellence View Special Section PDFs
All Classifieds Jobs Real Estate Garage Sales
Food and Recipes Letters to Santa Puzzles and Games Southwest Life and Events SWKPets Pet Blog United Way Fundraising Weather
Local and National Top 10 of 2011 Preps Live SWKPrepZone.com E-Edition
Local and National Top 10 of 2011 Business News E-Edition
Recent Videos Recent Photos Recent Podcasts Podcasts-Talk of the Town

  Add Your Comment | Read (0) Comments

AP: Kansas AG: DNA backlog shrinking

Published 9/2/2010 in Local News

TOPEKA (AP) — The backlog of DNA sampling in Kansas is being reduced thanks to $1 million in new state funding, state Attorney General Steve Six said Wednesday.

Six said the Kansas Bureau of Investigation has slimmed down the backlog of more than 38,000 unprocessed DNA samples in September 2009 to just over 11,000 as of late August. The samples were taken from people under arrest and collected at crime scenes.

"An issue local prosecutors and law enforcement officials brought to me time and time again is the delay in processing DNA samples that are crucial to bringing criminals to justice," Six said.

The attorney general said recent changes in Kansas law required not only those convicted of crimes but those arrested to give DNA samples, creating the backlog for processing. The backlog was reduced starting with the oldest samples from arrested individuals first.

KBI Director Bob Blecca said the reduction has led to matches with crimes under investigation in Kansas and other states.

"This has been a tremendous boost," he said.

Six said the backlog could be eliminated as soon as next February. But he cautioned that additional resources are needed to stay current with the samples, such as a new crime lab.

"You just triage what you can in these tough times," he said.

Federal grants also were used to increase lab resources, Six said, along with changes internally at the KBI to improve efficiency.

Blecca said he didn't know how much more money would be needed to stay current with the DNA samples, of which some 16,000 were received last year. He also said the agency remained understaffed, but changes were made in operations, including information technology and the crime lab to stretch resources.

"We are short 17 agents right now," Blecca said.

------

Online:

Kansas attorney general: http://www.ksag.org

Add your Comment About This Story

Commenting Rules

The Garden City Telegram reserves the right to delete any comment it deems inappropriate. We encourage visitor comments and ask that you be brief and add something relevant to the conversation. All comments are reviewed (usually within 24 hours or less) before appearing on this website.

Read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for full details of our policies.

Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts.
 

captcha ce9faf0f73b140f4a8468893eb3c22ba

Found 0 comment(s)!