Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine and other county officials are renewing calls for a city-county crime lab merger.
Months have passed since Sheriff Tim Dunning and Omaha Police Chief Alex Hayes last met to discuss merging their crime labs as a way to improve operational efficiency and achieve savings for taxpayers.
Kleine said he’s committed to resurrecting negotiations.
“It makes sense to us to pool resources and to pool our funds to operate one top-of-the-line lab for both entities, versus two separate labs where both offer similar services,” Kleine said. “Why not a metro lab that both entities and other people can share?”
A majority of County Board members say they are ready to support a merger, now that Kleine wants to help ensure that it happens.
Talk of a merger heated up last summer after Douglas County’s former crime lab manager, Dave Kofoed, went to prison on an evidence-tampering conviction. Kofoed had built the lab into a regional facility.
This spring, the county lab moved into the former Thomas Fitzgerald Veterans Home. The sheriff used $4 million in drug-forfeiture funds to renovate the west wing of the vacant county facility near 156th Street and West Maple Road to house the new crime lab and K9 unit.
Location and management control have been obstacles in merger talks.
Omaha police have concerns about relocating to the county lab because most of the Omaha crime lab’s work is within 10 minutes of its downtown location. The county’s lab is a 30- to- 40-minute drive from many parts of the city.
“The majority of our response calls are within the eastern part of the city,” Hayes said.
He said that while some law enforcement mergers around the country have worked, others have failed. He said he would be open to a merger if he were convinced that a joint crime lab would be more efficient and cheaper for the people of Omaha.
“Everybody needs to be on the same philosophical page on how this would operate,” Hayes said.
The Sheriff’s Office has supported consolidation — if it retained control over the operation.
“One regional crime lab under the sheriff would be preferable because the benefits would be considerable,” said Chief Deputy Sheriff Marty Bilek. “The notion of merging the city’s crime lab and the county’s crime lab is still a viable and desirable option.”
Kleine said there is no reason why the lab couldn’t have more than one location.
Kleine also suggested that the county and city jointly manage the merged lab, rather than one agency relinquishing control to the other. The 911 communications center is operated by a city-county board, he noted, and a similar board could oversee the crime lab.
County Board member Mike Boyle said he’s optimistic about a merger with Kleine organizing negotiations.
Last summer, the County Board left the merger talks up to Dunning and Hayes, but those talks broke off.
“I just think it’s way too politically charged, and too much turf gets involved between the sheriff and the Police Department,” Boyle said. “People are resistant to change, and this could be a big change.”
Kleine’s involvement is crucial to achieving a merger, board member Chris Rodgers agreed.
“Don Kleine is going to have to broker this deal,” Rodgers said. “Don is the key, to me, to talking with Police Chief Alex Hayes and Mayor (Jim) Suttle. “We’re at a point where we need to move. The longer we wait, the more difficult things become. I still want a merger to move ahead, if it makes sense.”
The Douglas County lab has come under scrutiny because of the Kofoed case. Kofoed’s conviction came two years after an internal affairs investigation cleared him of evidence-tampering. Allegations of evidence tampering had surfaced after the investigation into the 2006 slayings of a Murdock, Neb., farm couple.
Two men wrongly incarcerated initially for the Murdock slayings have civil lawsuits pending against the Sheriff’s Office and two other agencies.
Some County Board members also have concerns about the cost of the lab.
Boyle has complained that the lab isn’t charging enough in fees when it does work for outside agencies, leaving the county to subsidize that work.
“If Washington County calls us to do their work, we need to charge what the actual costs are,” Boyle said. “Even if there is a city-county merger, we can’t be giving away our services to these other agencies outside of Omaha.”
At the new facility, the sheriff projects $83,000 a year in outside revenue, or about 12 percent of the operation’s proposed budget. Boyle said the crime lab budget should be 100 percent paid for by outside revenue, since most of its work comes from outside agencies.
Bilek has called it more reasonable to recover the cost of three salaries, or roughly $200,000 including benefits and overtime.
State Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha continues to urge the merger of the city and county crime labs.
“Costs are not going down, and the taxpayers are concerned,” Ashford said. “We can’t afford the taxes and duplication of government services.”
He said that if cities continue to press the Nebraska Legislature for the ability to raise local sales tax rates, such legislation might require mergers and consolidation of services.
“That sales tax initiative will go nowhere, in my view, unless there is significant movement in Douglas County toward finding efficiencies to reduce redundancies,” Ashford said. “My sense is that we need only one crime lab in Omaha. These bills will be a priority. We are going to be serious about it.”
County Board Chairwoman Mary Ann Borgeson said she backs a crime lab merger and anticipates that the county can reach an agreement on a combined lab without the intervention of state government.
“My goal is to have an agreement before the County Board for a combined crime lab in some way, shape or form, by the end of this calendar year,” Borgeson said.
“While I would have hoped we could have done something by now, I am happy that we will ratchet up the discussions in the coming weeks,” she said. “You don’t want to rush things and not have a good plan.”
Contact the writer:
402-444-1056, john.ferak@owh.com
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