Mount Prospect turns to private lab to process police evidence

The Mount Prospect police department is switching back to the Northeastern Illinois Regional Crime Laboratory for evidence analysis and processing.

The village board approved the agreement with the lab at Tuesday's meeting in an annual amount not to exceed $75,000.

Police Chief John Koziol said the village was previously associated with the private lab from 1989 to 2003 but left for budgetary reasons.

Village Manager Michael Cassady said the decision to use the private lab was based on delays at the Illinois State Police Crime Laboratory System.

Koziol told the board that the state crime lab, which serves more than 1,200 agencies, is affected in its ability to analyze evidence by the amount of evidence submitted by each agency and the availability of lab analysts.

"They have to prioritize cases across the state, and that includes the city of Chicago," he said, adding that the city closed its crime lab in 1996 and merged with the state police lab. "We had delays before. They have just been magnified since then."

Koziol said in 2016-17, the village submitted 233 items from 126 active cases to the lab.

"I don't want to get up here and bad-mouth the analysts at the state," he said. "They do a fine job. They are very competent. But they are just overwhelmed by volume. You get into a situation where you don't even send things out for misdemeanors anymore that have an 18-month statute of limitations. You don't get your evidence back in time."

What the village winds up doing is prioritizing what it sends. With the Northeast Illinois Regional Crime Laboratory, the village will be increasing what it sends.

"If it's my car that's broken into or yours and we have a fingerprint, we would like to find out who that is and clear the case for our citizens," he said.

Trustee Richard Rogers said that the state crime lab is in Chicago and it sometimes takes an hour or more to drive there, while the private lab is in Vernon Hills, which will result in transportation savings.

Trustee Michael Zadel said the money is a good investment "for the deterrent that this can be when people know that we're going to pursue and we're going to get results and we're going to get them back on a timely basis."