CRIME LAB FUNDS IN LIMBO; JUSTICE SAYS $500,000 CAN'T BE USED FOR RENOVATION

Plans to turn a Southeast Missouri State University warehouse into a regional crime lab remain on hold over federal bureaucratic red tape.

"It is really frustrating," said Dr. Robert Briner, who as director of the Southeast Missouri Regional Crime Lab is anxious to move ahead with relocation of the lab to more spacious quarters

For that to occur, the Ellis Street warehouse must be renovated. But that can't happen until the U.S. Justice Department releases $500,000 to help cover construction costs.

Briner said Justice Department officials have indicated the money could be used for renovations to an existing crime lab but not for renovations to another building as the university wants.

Briner said Justice Department officials want the money to be used for equipment. But as Briner sees it, Congress appropriated the money so it could go to help fund the relocation. "We are dead in the water," Briner said Tuesday. "We are on hold."

The office of Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond is working to get the matter resolved and the money released for the project. Bond last year helped push for funding of the project.

"One way or another we are going to get this project completed," said Tom Schulte, Bond's district office director in Cape Girardeau. "The bottom line is we still have to work through the bureaucratic red tape."

Briner said the project is desperately needed. The crime lab has operated out of cramped quarters in an old house on the Southeast campus since 1976. It isn't handicapped accessible. The public entrance to the lab is via concrete steps down to a basement door.

Briner said the operation has outgrown the 2,500-square-foot house that was never designed to serve as a crime lab.

The relocation would provide the crime lab with 7,000 square feet of space on one level. The relocation carries a $1 million price tag, which includes the cost of new equipment.

Besides the $500,000, the project would be funded with a Justice Department grant of $250,000 for new equipment to do DNA analyzes of crime-scene evidence.

The university and the state have each earmarked $100,000 for development of the new crime lab. Another $50,000 would come from private donations. Briner said more than $40,000 already has been raised in private funds for the project.

But Briner said the project can't proceed without the half-million dollars. The Justice Department grant for new equipment means little without a place to put the equipment, he said.

Southeast's facilities management crews have moved out of the Ellis Street building. Briner said he hoped construction would have already begun to turn the building into a crime lab.

Briner said he hopes the funding issue can be resolved soon. Even then it would likely be fall at the earliest before the new crime lab could open, he said.