Houston Moving Slowly Toward Central Crime Lab

Four years after voters in Harris County, Texas, approved an $80 million budget to create a regional crime lab, the city of Houston is making slow progress toward joining the effort.

Houston Mayor Annise Parker has said she wants the city to move away from having its own lab, and the city has begun sending about a dozen DNA samples a month for testing at the county lab. Parker called the move “a toe in the water” toward a regional lab, but members of the county board of commissioners expressed their impatience with the lack of participation from Houston.

Read more from the Houston Chronicle

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Read about the history of problems at the Houston Police Department crime lab and recent testing backlogs

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