SAN ANTONIO – The Bexar County Crime Lab needs help to clear its backlog of sexual assault kits, according to its director.
Lab Director Orin Dym said there are currently 455 kits considered backlogged.
Dym said about 60% of the lab’s workload is focused on processing sexual assault kits.
“They’re also working the homicides,” Dym said. “They’re working the attempted homicides, the aggravated assaults.”
Bexar County last year spent $167,000 to improve the capacity and processing time of sexual assault kits, which includes new automated machinery that can simultaneously extract DNA from samples in multiple cases in a matter of hours.
“It allows us to go through classical screening techniques where an analyst is doing color tests and microscopic work, and it moves the decision making on whether or not there’s sufficient DNA to be analyzed to a very objective, reproducible method,” Dym said.
Garon Foster, forensic scientist supervisor of the crime lab’s DNA section, told KSAT in September 2022 he believed the machinery could help them cut into the backlog.
“I fully expect us to have or decrease this backlog in half and the turnaround time, I hope, in half within those four to six months,” Foster said then.
Dym said that hasn’t happened.
“I think that was an optimistic viewpoint,” Dym said. “We’re treading water, if you will. We’re no longer losing ground. We’re able to meet what’s coming in.”
Dym said the lab needs to add two more positions, which he hopes the county will add into its next budget.
“This isn’t about people not working hard,” he said. “This is about resources to get the job done.”
Dym said he understands the frustration some survivors of sexual assault might have about the delay in getting their kits tested.
“Our first and most important thing we can tell them is we want to make sure the first thing we do is that we work the case properly,” he said. “There are no shortcuts to that.”