Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Forensic Science Center Expansion topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Sedgwick County approves expansion of Regional Forensic Science Center
Summary
Sedgwick County approved plans to remodel its Regional Forensic Science Center and build an adjacent facility adding nearly 25,000 square feet to address growing caseloads and modern forensic needs.
Sedgwick County approved plans to modernize and expand the Regional Forensic Science Center, remodeling the current site and building a new facility nearby that will add nearly 25,000 square feet to laboratory and support space.
County officials said the work responds to a steady increase in both the volume and technical complexity of cases handled by the center since the building opened in 1995 and an annex was added in 2010.
"Technology has come a long way in 30 years, so there's great things that we could be utilizing to do better exams or actually less invasive exams," a county staff member said. Staff and examiners told the county the center now sees a greater variety of drugs, more cases with multiple substances and a much larger number of DNA samples and exhibits.
Under the approved plan, the new facility will consolidate several forensic disciplines while the existing Legacy Building and the 2010 annex will continue to house pathology, medical-legal death investigation and the toxicology laboratory. "If we can get the facility designed to better accommodate a more efficient workflow, then that should help, with our turnaround time and increase our efficiency," said Tyson Baird, chief toxicologist.
Staff and examiners described specific needs the expansion aims to address. Rose Whitaker, who helps with autopsies, said the current site lacks space and electrical capacity for imaging equipment that staff want to use. "We have been wanting to get a CAT scan machine in here, and you could run every case through that and you can see stuff that we can't normally see with just an x-ray. But we can't currently have a CAT scan machine in our blueprint because we, number 1, don't have the space for it, but we don't have the electrical grid for it as well," Whitaker said.
Sarah Rogers, the center's firearms examiner, said the expansion would provide more room to test-fire and store evidence and would allow her to start an internship program. "Firearms is a really apprenticeship based discipline. So getting someone started early and seeing what it is would be great, and that would help us, ensure future staffing," Rogers said.
County materials describe the project as a long-range plan that will take at least two years to design and build. The county did not specify funding sources, a construction schedule beyond the design/build estimate, or the vote tally for the approval in the transcript record.
Officials emphasized the public-health role of forensic pathology. "We're not just the morgue. The work that pathology does and that our medical legal death investigators do provides important health and vital statistics to the KDHE and to the CDC," said Dr. Stedman. "What we do here helps people live better and live longer."
Next steps listed by county staff include design work and planning for infrastructure upgrades; specific budget amounts and grant or bond sources were not specified in the meeting transcript.
