KANSAS CITY, Mo. - An inspection at Kansas City's police department crime lab highlights more than a dozen problems that must be fixed before the lab's accreditation can be renewed.
The inspection report appears to raise serious questions about the crime lab's procedures and whether it's able to keep crime evidence protected from tampering.
Crime lab director Linda Netzel defended her lab's work by giving NBC Action News an extensive tour Monday to show what failed the inspection, and why.
She showed us the evidence vault. It's inside a secure room, inside a secure building.
Bullets and shell casings are in boxes with tape at both ends, but that wasn't good enough for the inspectors.
When I asked whether she thinks her staff is doing a good enough job, Netzel answered, "Yes I do, but we're going to a completely different process because of that essential finding."
She's referring to the audit terminology.
Netzel then commented on the audit itself, "In some instances, in my opinion, a little unreasonable."
The inspection report failed the Kansas City crime lab on 13 items that must be fixed to renew the lab's accreditation.
It passed other sections of less important standards. The lab now has up to a year to prove it is following new procedures.
"They are very easy fixes. They'll be done by the end of this month." said Netzel.
The lab also was faulted for its record keeping to document the chain of custody, and for not sealing some inner envelopes as evidence is processed.
Netzel says the lab passed the previous audit, but this time different inspectors came here with different opinions.
"Everything was exactly the same as it is today," Netzel said.
This trace evidence lab has a backlog of 370 cases, but Netzel says the inspection did not fail anything that would affect the backlog.
The lab director also says the inspection failures did not affect any specific cases, and only pointed out the potential for problems, not actual problems.
The national director of the group that inspected the lab says this audit doesn't even look at the issue of backlogs.
It's only concerned with quality of the work, not the timeliness.
