Mayor Parker has released her FY2014 budget, and it’s great news for those of you that have been waiting for their single-stream recycling bin. More than 100,000 Houston homes will be added to the city’s single-stream recycling program by this fall, doubling the number of households receiving the 96-gallon green bins. About 35,000 homes will [...]
Posts Tagged ‘crime lab’
Mayor Parker kicks off her campaign
It’s the time of the season for Mayor Parker, who has a serious challenger this time, but also a stronger hand to play. In her tenure, Parker has given teeth to the city’s historic preservation rules, broken a deadlock with Harris County to help build the Dynamo stadium, gave scandal-ridden Metro new leaders and revised [...]
Where does the crime lab go from here?
Now that there’s a plan in place to clear the longstanding crime lab backlog, the question is what should we expect from the crime lab going forward? “It’s sort of hard to build a house when you’re trying to dig yourself out of a hole,” said Scott Hochberg, chairman of the Houston Forensic Science Local [...]
In praise of CODIS
We’re catching more crooks thanks to DNA. Not exactly an earth-shattering revelation, but it’s always nice to have some numbers. The number of Texas crimes solved after a suspect’s DNA matched with offenders’ DNA samples stored in the national repository known as CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) recently passed the 10,000th mark. The state averaged [...]
Former HPD lab supervisor files sues Lykos, county
Here’s a nice little going away present for District Attorney Pat Lykos. Two former Houston Police Department crime lab supervisors have filed a federal lawsuit against Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos, saying the county’s top prosecutor retaliated against them after they spoke out about problems with HPD’s breath-alcohol testing vans. The lawsuit, filed Monday, [...]
City-county cooperation
It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? At 9:27 p.m. on Election Day, when it was clear a Metro referendum crucial to both of their road-building budgets had passed, Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack’s phone buzzed with a text message from Houston Mayor Annise Parker: “Maybe we can tackle world peace next.” The note hinted at [...]
Council approves Mayor’s crime lab plan
It’s a done deal. City Council has appointed a nine-member board to oversee the city’s crime lab, the first step in yanking it from police department control and setting up a publicly funded non-profit corporation to do evidence testing. The vote was 15-2. [...] Though Council members supported the mayor’s proposal to try to insulate [...]
Meet your Crime Lab board
Mayor Parker has recommended nine people be appointed by Council to the governing board for the proposed Houston Forensic Science Local Government Corporation (LGC). “The people I have selected have varied backgrounds in science, law enforcement, public policy, business and defense of the accused,” said Mayor Parker. “Their perspective will be invaluable as we proceed [...]
The Mayor’s 2013 budget
What a difference a year – and better sales tax receipts and a better real estate market – makes. Mayor Parker has unveiled her budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, and it promises no service cuts, no layoffs, and no tax increase. Last year, the city issued 764 pink slips and cut services as budget [...]
Groundbreaking on the county’s new DNA forensics lab
Cool. Harris County officials on Tuesday broke ground on a new forensic genetics laboratory, to open later this year, which will let county scientists test DNA evidence in a growing number of cases. The 15,000-square-foot facility, on Holcombe in the Texas Medical Center, could be considered the little brother of a new Institute of Forensic [...]
Bromwich on the Mayor’s crime lab proposal
Michael Bromwich, the author of the report that laid out all of the problems with HPD’s crime lab, expresses his approval of Mayor Parker’s proposal for an independent crime lab. Mayor Annise Parker and her administration have proposed removing the city of Houston’s crime lab from the Houston Police Department, where it has resided since [...]
More details on the city’s crime lab plan
It’s starting to come into focus. An independent crime lab could cost nearly 20 percent more than the current police-run operation, a high-level Parker administration official told a City Council committee this week. Andy Icken, the mayor’s chief development officer, who is overseeing the project, said the annual budget of $22.8 million could rise to [...]
Meet the Houston Regional Forensic Science Center
Mayor Parker has revealed her vision for an independent regional crime lab. Mayor Annise Parker proposed on Wednesday taking control of the city’s crime lab away from the police department and handing it to an independent seven-member board with expertise in forensic science and fiscal management. “I clearly prefer to have our forensics sciences not [...]
County approves building new forensics lab
The Institute of Forensic Sciences is getting a new home. Commissioners Court on Tuesday gave staff the go-ahead to finalize a land deal with the Texas Medical Center that would give the county 2.79 acres at the northeast corner of Old Spanish Trail and Bertner. The deal would require construction to begin on the new [...]
More on the crime lab and the city jail
Here we have some more information about Mayor Parker’s plans for the crime lab, though it’s still not really clear where this is going. Parker wants to make the lab independent of HPD and the city, overseen instead by a local government board similar to the Port of Houston Authority, whose members are jointly appointed [...]
Inauguration Day 2012
Tuesday was Inauguration Day for Mayor Annise Parker, City Controller Ronald Green, and all 16 members of Houston City Council. Annise D. Parker began her second term as mayor of Houston on Monday with a commitment to bring more jobs to the city and to tackle an ambitious to-do list that includes progress on public [...]
Crime lab update
One way or another, Mayor Parker says we will have a new crime lab in 2012. After years of scandal, the police department will no longer run Houston’s crime lab, Mayor Annise Parker said Wednesday. The promise is among the initiatives she will elaborate on next week during her inauguration speech. Parker was reelected in [...]
The city and county would like to cooperate, but…
…it’s hard to do when there’s no money to do it with. City and county officials have not met for months to discuss a joint booking facility, long touted as a way to save taxpayers money. It would get the city out of the jail business and filter frequent fliers out of the incarceration pipeline [...]
Harris County moves forward with new crime lab
Harris County is moving forward with plans to create what is being called a regional crime lab. At a meeting Tuesday, commissioners approved a plan that would lead the Harris County Institute of Forensic Sciences into becoming a regional crime lab. The long-term plan is for the institute, formerly the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office, [...]
Two forensic bills
Texas has thousands of untested rape kits in it, and a bill to try to make something happen with them. The bill, by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, would require a police department to submit a rape kit to a crime lab within at least 10 days, and complete the DNA analysis no later than [...]
The HPD crime lab backlog
I just have one question about this: Lengthy waits for Houston police to test evidence for DNA is an increasingly common problem in the Harris County judicial system, prosecutors say. The understaffed HPD crime lab currently has a backlog of 1,434 cases with newly collected forensic evidence that has not been tested, and prosecutors worry [...]
Woodlands regional crime lab
I’m glad to see that there’s a new regional crime lab being opened up in Montgomery County to assist numerous law enforcement agencies in the area. But I’m especially pleased to see this tidbit in the story about it: Local law enforcement agencies that have had to wait six months or longer for forensic test [...]
Only some kinds of mistakes were made
I probably shouldn’t be, but I was amused by this Chron story about the current state of the HPD fingerprint lab and the consultants who audited it. [HPD Assistant Chief Timothy] Oettmeier said consultants also had performed more in-depth technical audits of a random selection of 548 completed criminal cases. No misidentifications were found, he [...]
The forensics backlog
I was going to blog about this Chron story regarding a backlog in fingerprint analyses for the HPD Crime Lab, but Grits said most of what I was going to say, so just go read him. The key, I think, is this: [W]hether the lab is independent or part of the police department, the problem [...]
Search for the Chief
More speculation about who will replace Harold Hurtt as HPD chief. Gary Blankinship, president of the Houston Police Officers’ Union, and other officers said they’ve heard Timothy N. Oettmeier, 57, Vicki L. King, 48, and Kirk A. Munden, 49, all assistant chiefs, mentioned as possible candidates to replace Harold Hurtt, who announced his resignation on [...]
Fingerprint problems
Lovely. An audit of the Houston Police Department’s fingerprinting comparison unit revealed so many problems that investigators will be reviewing all violent crime cases for the past six years, officials said Tuesday. Major problems in the Latent Prints Comparison Unit included significant deficiencies with staffing, a lack of proper supervisory review, inadequate quality control, technical [...]
Lykos asks Senate for regional crime lab funds
Harris County DA Pat Lykos went before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week to ask for money that would be used to help get a regional crime lab up and running. Lykos testified Tuesday in support of the Innocence Protection Act and urged lawmakers to implement a pilot program of independent DNA testing labs, with [...]
Endorsement watch: At Large
Having dispatched with the District Council races yesterday, the Chron continues with the schedule I’d hoped they’d follow by making their endorsements in the At Large races. As I thought, they went with incumbents Sue Lovell in #2 and Jolanda Jones in #5. The other two were not what I thought they’d be. At-Large Position [...]
How to uncrowd the jails
Defense attorney Rob Fickman makes the case for dealing with Harris County’s jail overcrowding problems. Jail overcrowding creates unsafe and unhealthy conditions. Locking up the wrong people does not leave sufficient room to lock up the right people, those who are truly dangerous. It also exposes the county and the taxpayers to expensive lawsuits. The [...]
Parker’s crimefighting plan
Tis the season for Mayoral candidates to send out position papers on various issues. I’ve gotten a couple in my mailbox in the past few days and want to spend a little time examining them. First up is Annise Parker’s Plan For 21st Century Policing In Houston. My thoughts on this are as follows. – [...]
Regional crime lab
This has been talked about for some time, and not unexpectedly it’s starting to move forward. After years of scandal at crime labs across the state, local officials have proposed opening a regional lab based at the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office. Previous debacles include three Houston exonerations, which occurred because of flawed forensics, questions [...]