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The Houston Forensic Science Center is seeking a significant funding boost to help address persistent backlogs that have frustrated local prosecutors and judges for the past several years.
Earlier this month, the board of the independent forensics lab approved its budget for the coming fiscal year, agreeing to ask the city of Houston for 22% more money than it received the prior year.
The request, made in part to replace pandemic-era funding, comes at a time when Mayor John Whitmire has directed all city departments aside from police and fire to identify areas where they can reduce spending. While not a city department, the lab is considered a component unit of Houston and receives most of its funding from the municipality.
“Like all component units of the city that have their own board, the board is expected to put forward a budget that best represents what they believe is needed to accomplish their mandate,” said Mary Benton, a spokesperson for the mayor. “The difference between the HFSC and other component units of the city is that the HFSC is a public safety agency.”
Lab officials say the additional funding will be used in large part to hire 34 employees, among them 14 crime scene investigators, seven forensic biologists and three firearms examiners.
While not backlogged, the crime scene unit of the lab is understaffed relative to the amount of Houston police crime scenes they are called to, lab officials have said. Crime scene personnel also spend long hours in court waiting to testify for cases, officials say.
Forensic biology and firearms, on the other hand, are among the lab’s most backlogged disciplines, with evidence taking on average more than 10 months to process, data released by the lab shows.
“We were asked to propose something that would make progress this year. This is what we’re proposing to make progress,” Peter Stout, the lab’s director, told board members.
Data released by the lab shows the number of Houston Forensic Science Center-specific employees grew steadily between 2016 and 2020, but has stagnated in recent years.
Too little, too late for some
The proposed budget does nothing to alleviate the concerns of Doug Griffith, president of the Houston Police Officers Union. For much of the past year, Griffith has called for the resignation of Stout, saying he’s had more than enough time to fix the backlogs.
Stout does appear to be making some progress, however. Latent print and digital multimedia backlogs have been sharply reduced and in some cases eliminated entirely over the past several months. Still, the overall number of backlogged evidence requests remains stubbornly high.
Roughly 4,400 evidence requests, equal to 17.9 percent of all requests, have gone more than a month without being fully analyzed and documented as of February, data released by the lab shows. In December, that number stood at roughly 4,100.
“I still have the opinion that he’s the wrong man for the job,” Griffith said. “But again, that’s a city issue, that’s a mayor issue outside my realm of expertise. I will just say that if someone is running a company the way Dr. Stout has run that, they would be gone. I’m hoping he can turn that ship around; I just have no confidence in the man.”
Stout, hired in 2014 soon after the Houston Forensic Science Center separated from the Houston Police Department, has repeatedly argued that the amount of backlogged requests in Houston is consistent with those in other labs across the country. He has also said backlogs are exacerbated by hiring delays, burnout among employees and industry challenges.
The Houston Landing last year surveyed crime labs in some of Texas’ most populous counties and found that some had even larger backlogs than the Houston crime lab in certain areas.
When informed of the lab’s request for additional funding, Griffith said Stout should have made that ask years ago.
“I agree that Stout is doing all he can, but he should have started years ago. This is not just something that just happened overnight,” Griffith said.
‘A step in the right direction’
Outgoing District Attorney Kim Ogg has also been outspoken about the backlogs at the Houston crime lab, arguing public safety is being put at risk. Last year, she called on former Mayor Sylvester Turner and City Council to “fully fund” the lab.
In an interview, Ogg said asking the city for more money is a step in the right direction, but argues the lab needs to outsource even more of its evidence requests to publicly funded labs and commercial ones.
“The delay of 12–14 months for ballistics and the delay of nine months to a year for a DNA test is substantially slowing down the progress of moving our cases,” Ogg said.
The Houston Forensic Science Center currently outsources about a fifth of its evidence requests, the majority of which are sexual assault kits.
Stout has said in previous interviews that there are only so many labs across the country that can handle excess work and that most cannot handle more than what his agency is already sending them.
In the meantime, 30 people are currently in training at the Houston Forensic Science Center, including seven DNA analysts to supplement the four already in place. Amy Castillo, chief operating officer and vice president of the lab, said she would like to have 30 DNA analysts some day.
“Our goal is to not have to outsource,” she said.
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