At a ceremony on Monday, Kane County officials formally accepted a federal grant of nearly $1 million to help build a regional forensics laboratory.
The goals of the Kane County Forensic Laboratory are to rapidly generate leads for criminal investigations, streamline the process of obtaining information for pending court cases and determine cause of death in a timely manner for grieving families, according to a presentation given at the ceremony.
The grant, which was previously announced earlier this year, will be put toward expanding the relatively newly-formed lab, officials said during the ceremony.
The $963,000 formerly given to the lab on Monday was requested by U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, D-Naperville, who chose the project as one of 15 from across the 11th Congressional District that he asked to be funded through the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee’s Community Project Funding program, according to a previous news release from Foster’s office.
“During my time in Congress, it’s always been one of my top priorities to make sure that Illinois receives its fair share of federal funding, and it’s my duty to make sure that, when those federal resources arrive, that they arrive at projects and places where they will do the most good for the communities that I represent,” Foster said during the ceremony.
A local forensics lab is needed in Kane County because, currently, law enforcement needs to send DNA samples to the backlogged Illinois State Police labs, which can take up to a year to generate results, according to Kane County Forensic Laboratory Co-Director Sarah Ware.
The lab’s other co-director, Timothy Ruppel, said at the ceremony that the funds will go primarily toward instruments for DNA analysis, which will help generate leads to help solve both property crimes and sexual assault cases.
“I can’t wait a year for doing some of this type of analysis. By that time, the case is cold,” Ruppel said. “If we can reduce that to weeks instead of a year, the investigators can be on top of those cases.”
The rest of the funds will go to buy additional equipment to test seized drugs, according to Ruppel. He said any leftover funds will help to pay for toxicology equipment, which tests the recently deceased for drugs or other chemicals in their system, and for lab accreditation.
Kane County Coroner Rob Russell said at the ceremony that he used to have to send drug and alcohol tests to a lab in Pennsylvania.
According to Ware’s presentation, it would take up to three months to get those results back, which would delay death certificates.
With the lab’s current equipment, those tests can now be done in just a few hours, Russell previously told The Beacon-News.
In addition to faster testing times, an expanded forensics laboratory would help to cut down on costs, officials said.
According to Ware’s presentation, the Kane County Coroner’s Office spends about $100,000 each year on postmortem toxicology reports. Similarly, the Kane County court system spends about $70,000 each year on probationary drug screenings, her presentation said.
If the lab gets additional funding in the future, it will go toward hiring new personnel, Laboratory Information Management System software and additional instruments for postmortem toxicology testing, according to Ruppel’s presentation.
He said that, if the lab gets those additional instruments, it would be the only one in the state to provide comprehensive postmortem toxicology testing.
“As far as I’m concerned, this is a pilot laboratory. This is where we start,” Ruppel said. “I would eventually like to build it into its own separate building and grow it to the point where this region needs.”
Russel said it is his vision that the Kane County Forensic Laboratory, which is a collaboration between his office, the Kane County Sheriff’s Office and the Kane County State’s Attorney’s Office, will one day serve law enforcement agencies from across the region, not just in Kane County.
Kane County State’s Attorney Jamie Mosser, who did not attend the ceremony, previously told The Beacon-News that the goal is for the lab to one day become its own, self-funding county department, with revenue coming from the fees charged to outside law enforcement agencies.
Officials said the lab is still several years away from being self-sustaining.
rsmith@chicagotribune.com
