City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George wants to create a new forensics lab for the Boston Police Department.
“There is a grave and depressing need for a new and improved crime lab in the city,” she said during a recent city council meeting.
The police department currently has a forensics lab at the BPD Headquarters in Roxbury with eight specialized police officers and 35 civilians who are responsible for obtaining, preserving, and testing evidence for presentation at court. The BPD recently added a new specialized unit to the forensics lab in an attempt to investigate the unsolved homicides.
According to the councilor, there are 1,367 unsolved homicide cases in Boston as of June 21, 2019.
“They play such an important role in this work,” said Essaibi George of the crime lab. “We need a new lab to help speed up the process and produce results at a faster rate.”
According to the order for a hearing, through a study conducted by the Washington Post along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), it has been tracked that between the years 2007 to 2017, there were 614 homicides in Boston and 50 percent of the suspects were not arrested.
“Our residents deserve this. Victims of violent crimes deserve this,” said Essaibi George.
Essaibi George mentioned a new bill that was passed at the State House that demands to speed up the process of testing rape kits. She wants to speak with the Boston Police Department and find out if a new lab would help them test these kits faster.
City Councilor Michael Flaherty knows personally how important a crime lab is to a community. His cousin was murdered in Florida and he credits their crime lab for finding the murderer.
“Without them, my family wouldn’t have gotten justice,” he said.
The hearing will be scheduled at a later date.
