Editorial

NEW HOME FOR CRIME LAB WELL-DESERVED

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The Southeast Missouri Regional Crime Lab, which for 25 years has had to operate from cramped quarters in an old house on the campus of Southeast Missouri State University, soon will get a new home.

With announcement of a $750,000 grant from the U.S. Justice Department, the crime lab plans to relocate by the end of the year to a university-owned warehouse at Ellis and Merriwether streets. That will give the lab about 8,000 square feet from which to operate, approximately three times the space it somehow has managed to operate in at the campus house.

It has taken two years for the crime lab to secure the federal grant. The renovation of the warehouse and relocation will cost about $1.2 million. The state and university each have kicked in $100,000, and about $50,000 has been raised from private donations. The rest of the money comes from cities and counties across Southeast Missouri whose police and sheriff's departments use the crime lab's many forensic services.

The move could eventually lead to a regional morgue to store bodies and handle autopsies in criminal cases. The warehouse that will serve as the lab's new home contains about 14,000 square feet, sufficient space for a morgue. The university would like another $400,000 for additional improvements that would include the morgue. To get that money, another $100,000 would be needed locally.

Creation of the morgue could eliminate the need for Southeast Missouri law enforcement agencies to transport bodies to Farmington, Mo., and St. Louis for autopsies.

But that is a matter to be handled later. For now, the crime lab and all the law enforcement agencies that use it have reason to look forward to the move to a new home.

The lab has come a long way since its meager beginnings in 1970. That is when it opened in the university's Magill Hall with a $15,000 budget and used mostly equipment and supplies of the university's chemistry department. Six years later it moved to the house, which it quickly outgrew

The lab is a valuable tool to police organizations because it is easily and quickly accessible from across the region and has expanded its services significantly through the years. Without it, evidence would have to go to a state or national lab, which means it often would get caught up in the volume of work they must perform.

Southeast Missouri is fortunate to have its own crime lab, and the move to larger quarters is well-deserved and long overdue.