The Unified State Laboratory including laboratories for the crime department, the medical examiner and the Department of Food and Agriculture is now open. The idea to build the facility started twelve years ago.
Jay Henry, the director of the Utah Department of Public Safety Criminalistics Laboratory, said 15 to 20 years ago, many of the old labs were retrofitted into an office building and they just “made it work.” But, it was time for a change.
“What this facility is, is a combined facility that was built because we recognized that it might be cheaper if all the departments got together and pulled their resources and put them into one combined facility,” Henry said.
The departments were finally able to construct a purpose built facility, according to Henry.
“It’s built for the crime lab in mind, not an office building first then oh, let’s put a lab in next, but crime lab first, medical examiner first, department of agriculture laboratory first,” Henry said. “Our instruments are better situated to prevent contamination. Our employees have a place to spread evidence out, and use the latest techniques and equipment to find evidence, to test food products, to identify deceased individuals.”
Henry said the previous facilities were space challenged and couldn’t be remodeled after a certain point. This limited updated equipment from being installed and ultimately limited their productivity, especially with the way public safety is evolving.
“Investigators are becoming more reliant on the crime lab to test items of evidence and to help solve their cases to help give them facts to help close their cases out,” Henry said.
As the nature of police work changes the labs have become really busy, according to Henry.
“We received probably I would say a three, four, five hundred percent increase in case work since 2009,” Henry said. ”Along with that, in the last five years about a 900 percent increase in codice data base hits.”
Henry said codice cases refer to an offender in the data base who has been associated to the crime scene sample being tested. The Utah lab is connected, through the F.B.I., to all 50 states.
Henry said citizens need to realize the lab is designed to support their police departments, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Then you’ve got the food and agricultural laboratories supporting the meat inspectors making sure the food safety chain is adequate for consumers. Along with the medical examiners dealing with an opioid epidemic.
“The state of Utah citizens should know that you’ve got good people here, very competent people here and if a sample needs to be tested we’ll get it right,” Henry said.
Funding for the $42 million facility came from the Utah general fund for state infrastructure improvement.
