Jefferson County will have its own forensic crime lab next year.
A groundbreaking ceremony was held May 6 where the lab will be built next to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office evidence storage building on Mason Circle North in Pevely.
Public Works Director Jason Jonas said about 40 people attended the groundbreaking, adding that work on the lab was expected to start this week.
Jefferson County Executive Dennis Gannon, left, and Sheriff Dave Marshak were among the about 40 people at the groundbreaking ceremony for the forensic crime lab on May 6 in Pevely.
The lab is scheduled to be completed by summer 2025, Sheriff Dave Marshak said.
“It was great to see the excitement from everyone for such an important project in our community,” Marshak said. “These conversations (to build a crime lab) started close to three years ago. It is an exciting time to see things finally come to fruition.”
Jonas said the project will cost approximately $9.6 million.
County Council members voted unanimously on Feb. 25 to award a $6.13 million construction contract to K&S Construction in St. Louis to build the lab.
Jonas said the county anticipates spending approximately $1.7 million to cover design, construction management and other costs and an approximate $1.8 million on fixtures, furnishing and equipment.
He said the county plans to use $7.1 million of its allotment from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) stimulus plan to cover most of the cost, and the Sheriff’s Office will cover the cost of the fixtures, furnishing and equipment.
“I had my doubts because there were a lot of hurdles to overcome with whether the money would be there or the level of commitment,” Jonas said of the lab being built.
“It kept coming together all the way through. It was a nice evolution.”
The nearly 11,000-square-foot lab will include areas for processing DNA evidence, vehicles, fingerprints, firearms and drug tests. A separate area will be devoted to computer crime investigations.
Marshak has said the crime lab is needed because his office now sends evidence to the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s lab in Jefferson City. That lab, which processes evidence from county and city law enforcement agencies around the state, can take up to a year to turn results around – if it accepts them at all because of the overload.
“The thing that is gratifying is that residents of Jefferson County who may have had a crime committed against them, we hope to find a resolution to that much faster than we are currently,” County Executive Dennis Gannon said. “We are a relatively safe county, but we need something like this because there are people who have had to wait or the court system has been jammed up because we can’t process crimes quickly enough.”
Marshak said when the lab is completed, scientists, crime scene technicians, latent print examiners and evidence team members will work out of the building.
He said he plans to hire a crime lab director by Jan. 1.
“Beyond the construction, we have much work ahead of us,” Marshak said. “We are working on procurement on everything from staffing to equipment, software, licensing and consumables.
“We will develop policies, procedures and put systems in place to prepare for the accreditation process. The implementation of this project from conceptual planning to providing full service has been painstaking, yet an exciting project for our team.”