BEXAR COUNTY, Texas – The Bexar County Criminal Investigation Lab is experiencing backlogs in its DNA, firearms and drug analysis sections. KSAT found that cases in all categories remain unworked after 30 days.
KSAT’s Courtney Friedman started with a deep dive into the firearms backlog, which has been increasing for years.
When crimes involving weapons occur in our community, the evidence ends up at the Bexar County Criminal Investigation Lab.
“It is firearms, bullets, cartridge cases, weapons, and it could be tool marks,” lab director Orin Dym said. “If someone were to take a pair of channel locks and pry off a doorknob to break into a place, the marks left behind on that doorknob can be identified to the tool.”
Dym said it takes a very specific person to analyze all the firearms and testify in court during criminal trials.
“Firearms analysts are hard to come by. They really are. There aren’t a lot of them in the country,” Dym said.
Dym sat down with Friedman, reviewing graphs and numbers that showed the backlog in firearms cases, explaining that most of it was due to staffing issues.
KSAT wanted the full picture and requested five years of data.
The data showed that the firearms cases started gradually rising in June 2022. Dym pointed out the graph, saying it began as a rise in cases and not enough analysts.
“It’s not a huge increase, but then it starts climbing. We get into the budget cycle,” Dym said. “We request an additional position because we’re seeing this increase. We were given the position.”
While Dym said the county has been responsive to staffing requests, they were unable to find an experienced analyst and hired an entry-level employee who requires two full years of training.
“That included sending this applicant to Virginia to a school run by the ATF. Two years, that’s a long time. That’s longer than most disciplines,” Dym said. “Firearm tool mark examination is our one discipline where the analyst is the instrument.”
While that training was happening, the lab’s most experienced analyst retired in July 2024. The number of backlogged cases increased from about 334 to around 540 in late September.
“When his cases have come up for court, we’ve been asked to reanalyze them,” Dym said. “So far we’ve reanalyzed 27 of his cases, consisting of 308 items.”
While staffing catches up, Dym has hit another roadblock.
Dym said he has started noticing a recent trend this year: a rise in complex cases involving multiple shooters.
One recent shooting happened in late August in south Bexar County, where a 16-year-old was arrested after three people were caught on camera unloading over 60 rounds into a house and driving off.
Dym’s team has to analyze all of it.
“How many shooters are there? How many guns are we looking for? And you’re looking at the cartridge cases, going, How many types of weapons can we identify?” Dym said.
Such cases can take nearly a month to process, Dym said.
Despite more complex cases, Dym said they’re about to be fully staffed, and he believes they’ll start clearing the backlog.
“That should slow down with a little bit of time,” he said.
KSAT plans to follow up and look into the backlogs in the crime lab’s drug and DNA sections.
Read also: