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The Douglas County Sheriff's Office soon will have more space for its crime lab and K-9 unit.
Douglas County Sheriff Tim Dunning recently received the County Board's approval to use up to $2.5 million of forfeited drug funds to relocate the lab and canine units. Both units will be moved from the Sheriff's Office to the former Thomas Fitzgerald Veterans Home.
The west wing of the former veterans home — more than 14,000 square feet — will be renovated. The building is located a few blocks east of the Sheriff's Office, near 156th Street and West Maple Road.
The County Board has been discussing for the past couple of years how to use the roughly 100,000-square-foot building. The county retained ownership of the 80-year-old building two years ago after residents were moved to the new Eastern Nebraska Veterans Home in Bellevue.
The former veterans home is now empty, but board members are also talking about moving the Douglas County Election Office to the building.
The county's current crime lab, which has 14 employees, works out of a 1,600-square-foot facility at the Sheriff's Office, said Capt. Steve Glandt, who oversees both the crime lab and K-9 unit.
The new 10,000-square-foot lab will give the department more room to work, space for new equipment and the ability to expand in the future, Glandt said.
About 20 area agencies contract to use the county's crime lab services, Dunning said. The lab also occasionally handles evidence from the Omaha Police Department and the Nebraska State Patrol.
Dunning said the federal charges against Douglas County CSI chief David Kofoed had no bearing on plans for the new lab. The renovation had been in the works for more than a year.
Earlier this year, a federal grand jury indicted Kofoed in connection with his handling of evidence in the 2006 shotgun slayings of a rural Cass County couple. Kofoed is currently on trial.
Glandt said the county's K-9 unit also was in need of more space. Currently, the six-dog unit has little room for training or storage at the Sheriff's Office. Often, Glandt said, the dogs are left in patrol cars, with the heat running or the air-conditioning on, if a deputy needs to stop in the office.
When the dogs are off duty, they go home with their partner deputies. If the deputy goes on vacation or has other time off, the dogs are housed in private kennels.
After the renovation, Glandt said, private kennels will no longer be needed because the unit will have kennels.
The county is working with Alley Poyner Macchietto Architecture on designs. The county will ask for bid proposals from construction companies in January or later.
Dunning said the renovation could be completed as early as May.
He said that no general fund dollars will be used for the project because the county is using forfeited drug funds.
Dunning estimated that Douglas County has seized more than $5 million worth of drug money during the past three years. Most of that money has come from drug busts along Interstate 80.
The county's K-9 dogs frequently find large amounts of illegal drugs along the Interstate, Dunning said. If money is found along with drugs, the county assumes it's drug money and attempts to seize it, he said.
Federal law allows profits from drug-related crimes to be seized by the government. The county keeps 80 percent of the money, and the Drug Enforcement Administration gets the remaining 20 percent.
Most of the equipment in the crime lab has been paid for with forfeited drug funds.
“Why should the taxpayers pay for it?” Dunning said. “Let the criminals pay for it.”
Contact the writer:
444-3198, chip.olsen@owh.com
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