Most news teams just scratch the surface, but Fox 25 Special Reports go beyond the headlines to give you the whole story.

OSBI Outsourcing Lab Work Away From $30 Million State Facility

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, or OSBI,
opened its new crime lab in 2008.  The
facility’s final price tag was $30 million, several million dollars over the
original budget.  At the time, the lab
was billed as the ultimate resource for the OSBI and law enforcement agencies
across the state. 

“It’s very successful,” said Stan Florence, the director
for the OSBI.  Florence says the new lab
has helped cut down the wait time for crucial DNA testing.  “It’s probably better than it’s ever been
actually.  I think our backlog on DNA
cases is probably 30 days, maybe no more than 40 for sure.”

However, during a review of records obtained by Fox 25,
we learned the OSBI is not using its own lab to finish a job it spent nearly a
million dollars in grant money to investigate. 
An email revealed that the OSBI was going to outsource cold case
evidence to a DNA lab out of Virginia. 
The contract will cost the state $200,000, the money will come from the
federal cold case grant.  "That's a
common trend in the nation with crime labs,” Florence told Fox 25, “Primarily
it's because of manpower.”

The $200,000 would be enough to hire additional staff to
use Oklahoma’s own lab, but Director Florence says it’s difficult to hire
people to only work for a year on a grant. 
“Our time to train someone is about 3 years before they're fully vested
in doing DNA analysis on their own,” Florence said.  However, Oklahoma first started getting grant
money, which was specifically intended to investigate cases involving DNA, 3
years ago. 

“It really doesn't make sense,” said Kyle Eastridge, a
former detective and cold case investigator with the OSBI.  “Why are they outsourcing to them anyway?  I mean we've got this great lab in Edmond
that should have been funded and staffed appropriately.” 

Eastridge only served a short time at the OSBI, but says
he disagreed with leaders there on how the federal grant money was spent.

The grant was supposed to pay for overtime expenses for
agents and analysts to work on cold cases. 
It was renewed once, but director Florence says his staff is too tired
to complete the DNA testing before the grant money expires at the end of the
year.  “We have worked so much overtime
that our staff is just…they're tired.  And
it's difficult, they worked hard for a year or two at it and it reached a point
where that extra time is just not worth it to them,” Florence said.

Documents obtained by Fox 25 also raise other questions about
the outsourcing and the restrictions the OSBI is putting on the contract
company.

The contract is with Bode Technologies, one of the best
DNA labs in the country.  However, the
records obtained by Fox 25 show that Bode asked the OSBI if they could use
newer technology to screen samples.  The
OSBI says “NO.”  The document goes on to
say that the “vendor this is awarded to must use the same kits and methods that
our analysts are trained to perform…”

Eastridge says that caveat raises additional questions
about the management of the grant and cold cases.  “If you're going to the best in the field,
why don't you listen to what they say about testing?”

Director Florence said he didn’t know why the rule was in
the contract.  He said because Fox 25 did
not provide him with the exact question he did not prepare an answer.  Fox 25 does not provide exact questions prior
to interviews.  We did inform Director Florence
that we wanted to ask him questions about the contract with Bode Technologies,
but he said he would have to get back with us to answer our questions.  As of the air-date of this story, he never
did.

The questions about case management go beyond one contract.  Eastridge says during his short time at the
OSBI he butted heads with agency leaders over how his resources were
spent.  “I've been to little towns all
over Oklahoma collecting whatever they have on cases that can never be in a
court of law.” 

Eastridge says some of the cases he was ordered to investigate
were outside the statute of limitations and outside the scope of the
grant.  “My biggest example of that was
one of the cases assigned to me was a burglary...a second degree burglary of an
oil office in Anadarko.”  That case was
from the 1980s and well beyond prosecution.

Director Florence defended the investigation of old
cases, even those outside the scope of criminal prosecution.  “What we may do is identify an offender and
if we run it through CODIS we might actually get a hit on other cases as well
that may fall within the statute of limitations.  So there's value in running those old cases
even though we might not be able to file charges on those old cases.”

The OSBI says the cold case grant money has allowed agents
to identify two serial rapists and led to charges being filed in two old
homicide cases.  Eastridge says there
could be more convictions had the cases been assigned properly.

The OSBI will not be reapplying for the cold case
grant.  Director Florence says they have gone
through nearly 500 cases from agencies all around Oklahoma and do not have
enough new cases to qualify for a new federal cold case grant.  Florence says that doesn’t mean cold cases
will gather dust.  “We will just continue
to work them in house like we did before the grant was here.”

Posted: Wednesday, November 14 2012, 10:06 PM CST