DA outlines IT, evidence storage and vehicle needs as electronic caseload grows

District Attorney Kendra Culpepper presented a multi-part budget request focused on IT capacity, evidence storage and vehicle replacements.

Culpepper said the DA's office is seeing rapidly growing storage demands because electronic discovery now delivers large amounts of digital evidence in every criminal case. "The storage needs for the district attorney's office are 3 and 4 times the needs of the entire rest of the county," she said, and noted that certain offenses (e.g., murder) can generate tens of thousands of items that must be retained under state records schedules. She described IT recommendations for replacement "super" desktop machines and laptops that are sized for heavy digital/video workloads and said the county must weigh continuing to self‑host versus moving to an outsourced evidence management platform.

On capital needs, Culpepper requested replacement investigator vehicles and three black‑and‑white printers that have begun producing defective output. She included a vehicle quote and a DA vehicle inventory showing several fleet cars aged 8–12 years; she said maintenance costs are rising and replacements are approaching. Culpepper also proposed an office manager position to consolidate recruiting, training and administrative duties to free prosecutors for casework and to move some clerical duties to a civil/juvenile clerk. "We would move a lot of those administrative duties to the clerk...and then we would have an office manager that would take care of recruiting, interviewing, training," she said.

Commissioners asked for fuller documentation on current server and hosting costs versus the proposed PineTech/cloud solution and asked the fleet committee to weigh in on vehicle selection and rotation plans. Culpepper said she would provide vehicle quotes, IT estimates and further detail for the court to consider in budget preparation. No formal appropriation was made at the workshop.