NEW ORLEANS — With thousands of untested DNA samples in its warehouse, there is no question the NOPD needs a faster way to process forensic evidence. It is a problem almost two decades in the making and Friday morning, city leaders announced they could be one step closer to a solution.
The city’s old crime lab was destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. Since then, the NOPD has sent its DNA samples to the Louisiana State Police’s testing lab in Baton Rouge. “It had a real impact on this community, on our victims of crime,” Mayor Latoya Cantrell said Friday.
At the end of last year, the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate reported that the NOPD had about 73,000 untested DNA samples in its warehouse. That was a bigger backlog than had been reported the year before.
In 2020, the city broke ground on a new crime lab, which would allow the NOPD to process evidence faster. “Fighting crime takes more than just manpower, it takes special tools,” said NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick.
She, the mayor, and other officials held a press conference Friday at the new crime lab, where they announced a $3.3 million federal grant for crime initiatives in New Orleans.
The crime lab is still not able to process DNA evidence. The lab’s director, Dr. Shamika Kelley, said Friday that part of the grant will “outfit the crime laboratory for equipment that's going to be leading-edge,” including forensic software, hardware, and chemistry equipment.
A little less than a million dollars of the grant will go toward crime prevention. Congressman Troy Carter, who helped secure the funding along with Senator Bill Cassidy, told WWL Louisiana that could include things like after-school programs. “Going hand-in-hand is catching the bad guy, solving the crime, and bringing people to justice. But equally as important, if not more important, is preventing crime, period,” he said.
The NOPD said the crime lab is expected to be fully operational by the fall of 2027.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.