Pubdate: Wed, 09 Jul 2003 Source: Huntsville Times (AL) Copyright: 2003 The Huntsville Times Contact: http://www.htimes.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/730 Author: David Holden FORENSIC AGENCY TESTED BY LACK OF STATE FUNDING Department Has Backlogs In Every Case Area, Director Says Frank discussions about lean times will be on the agenda when 130 members of the Alabama State Association of Forensic Sciences convenes its annual meeting today in Huntsville. The organization is made up mostly of employees of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences who meet each year to share their knowledge and experiences, said Kimberlie A. Ross, association president. The department, like other state agencies, doesn't yet have a budget for the new fiscal year, which will begin Oct. 1. That size of that budget will likely depend on the results of a Sept. 9 vote on Gov. Bob Riley's tax package. Already short-handed and short on money, the department is struggling with backlogs in cases in every category, said its director, Taylor Noggle Jr. "The bottom line is that we are going to have to have some funding relief any way it comes," he said. If the tax package fails, the department could be looking at drastically cutting services, Noggle said. Noggle asked the Legislature in February for an increase of $7 million for the new fiscal year. The agency had an operating budget of about $16 million this year, he said. That includes about $8.5 million from the Alabama general fund, another $6 million from court costs, and about $700,000 in federal grants to fund DNA work. The agency also received a $1 million federal grant for crime laboratory upgrades. The uncertainty about money makes it difficult to plan, Noggle said. For years the agency has been falling behind in its case load because of lack of employees, he said. The backlog is between 10,000 and 11,000 drug cases, about 2,100 toxicology cases, about 2,000 DNA cases and around 750 firearms cases. Noggle said his department would like to get forensic results back to law enforcement agencies in 30 days. "But we are working cases now on more or less an emergency basis," he said. The department received 37,000 new cases last year. About 2,000 of those were death cases that required autopsies. About 26,000 to 27,000 were drug cases that require analysis, and about 1,000 were firearms cases. On top of that, the agency received 18,000 requests for other forensic tests. "It is not unusual for us to have 30 or 40 items of DNA evidence on a complicated homicide to work," Noggle said. The agency has 175 employees in its nine laboratories. "We estimate that we need 225 to 235 people to do what we need to do in a timely fashion. We have got to have more people, or we are going to take a look at how we do business," Noggle said. The agency expects to receive accreditation in August from the American Society of Crime Laboratories, said Deputy Director Brent Wheeler. The society's accreditation board conducted an audit of the department in June, he said. "We are the largest agency in the country that is not accredited," he said. "A lot of courts are asking about it. It will mean we are documented as a nationally recognized program." As the convention begins, the agency is tying up loose ends on a big construction project funded by a $17 million bond issue floated almost three years ago for various construction projects, including new labs for the state forensic department in the Birmingham and Montgomery areas. Today's featured speaker at the association's convention was to be FBI Special Agent Richard Marx, a forensic scientist who has worked for the department. Marx, a graduate of Grissom High School and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, headed the Staten Island Recovery Project where debris was hauled from the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. The association winds up this year's meeting on Friday. - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk