Why Should Police Pay to Make Prosecutors’ Jobs Easier?

A fol­low up to the pre­vi­ous blog entry on Dallas County push­ing costs onto law enforce­ment agencies.

Because of bud­get cuts, Dallas County Commissioners will no longer allow the DA’s office to pick up the tab for crime lab test­ing once pros­e­cu­tors take cases.

That means if tests are needed for DNA or firearms, etc that the police depart­ments must pay for the tests.

This is dif­fer­ent than in coun­ties like Collin and Tarrant where the DAs offices pay after pros­e­cu­tors accept the cases.

This is a very valid ques­tion and point. Why should police agen­cies have to pay extra monies to help the pros­e­cu­tion win their cases? The defense com­mu­nity must pay them­selves. A pub­lic defender’s office, or a pri­vate indi­vid­ual can’t order up foren­sic test­ing and pass the bill onto the police department.

If the police have done a good enough job inves­ti­gat­ing the case that the prosecutor’s office is will­ing to charge the indi­vid­ual, and take over the case, the ball should be in their court. They obvi­ously feel the case is solid enough for it to be out of police hands. So any fur­ther foren­sic test­ing really isn’t to help fig­ure out “who dun­nit”, rather its only pur­pose is to help make it eas­ier for the pros­e­cu­tion to win the case.

Why should police agen­cies have to pay to make the pros­e­cu­tors’ jobs easier?

Read the full story here.