Greene County prosecutor to press for higher pay for crime lab

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. -- Crime might not pay, but the Greene County prosecutor says working in a crime lab should.

Greene County Prosecutor Darrell Moore says he plans to press state lawmakers for pay raises for crime lab workers because their starting pay of about $26,000 trails eight other states around Missouri. Crime lab officials acknowledge that low pay contributes to high turnover at labs.

Evidence sent to the state crime lab in Jefferson City joins a backlog of more than 4,000 cases built up through employee turnover and understaffing.

Springfield police have come to expect a year's wait for DNA results in rape cases.

"I would like anybody who would be opposed to this to try to explain to a rape victim why it takes 12 to 13 months to get a rape kit back," Moore said.

Fashioned with the help of local law enforcement officials, the proposal is an initial step in Moore's quest to get a local crime lab.

St. Louis and Kansas City both have their own crime labs. The Jefferson City lab serves most of the rest of the state, with more than 70 percent of the caseload coming from agencies other than the highway patrol.

Officials feel higher wages would keep Missouri criminalists from leaving for higher paying jobs in places like Kansas and Iowa.

According to a survey of last year's salaries, a Missouri state criminalist's starting pay is about $26,000 a year. Beginning salaries in eight other states average nearly $30,000 annually.

With five years' experience, a Missouri criminalist earns about $37,000 a year, more than $7,000 less than the average in neighboring states.

Moore wants to boost starting criminalist pay to $30,000 a year. With a few years of experience, someone would make a $46,000 annual salary. A supervisor would make at least $51,000. He estimates his proposal would cost $2 million to $2.5 million to implement next year.

Crime lab assistant director Bill Marbaker said the lab replaced 22 of its 41 criminalists during the past three years, primarily because of pay.

"Most got trained and moved on to better paying jobs in other states," he said.

It should take a year or more to trim down the lab's excess caseload, Marbaker said.

In non-homicide cases, officials said it takes an average of 13 months to get DNA results, about 10 months for toxicology, and three to four months for standard drug testing from Jefferson City.

Newly hired criminalists take a few months to train before they start handling cases.

"We've been in training mode for the last three years. That's part of the reason for the backlog," Marbaker said.

The state lab's caseload increases roughly 3 percent to 5 percent annually, Marbaker said. Because of technology advances, the facility receives more specimens for examination than in the past.

With the crime lab's backlog, a lot of "simple little cases" get delayed, said Springfield police chief Lynn Rowe. Sometimes big ones do, too.

When detectives gathered evidence last December in the fatal shooting of Springfield photographer Rick Norman, they tried to avoid the inevitable lengthy wait by going with the Kansas City lab.

However, prosecutors still do not have final results for that case. Medical leave for a criminalist was partly to blame for the delay.

"The high turnover rate continues to slow us down. It's just a vicious cycle," Rowe said.

"From my end it's been very frustrating because we have cases, including very serious cases, where we're almost at a standstill because we can't get immediate testing, and that shouldn't be," Moore said.