TBI director touts faster evidence processing, rapid-DNA rollout and troubling fentanyl levels in wastewater tests

David Rausch, director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee the bureau's recent investments have shortened forensic turnaround times and expanded investigative capacity.

"Our turnaround times now, for **** kits, the kid only, is an average of 10.1 weeks," Rausch said, adding local lab averages and the bureau's target of 8–12 weeks. He described training and hiring efforts to fill 46 vacancies and outlined a plan to roll out rapid-DNA capability statewide to give investigators a profile within roughly 90 minutes in certain cases.

Rausch said the bureau used rapid-DNA successfully in a mass-fatality response at the AES plant in Waverly, where teams identified most victims on site, and that staff traveled to study international techniques to improve results. He emphasized that rapid-DNA is intended to give investigators faster leads, not immediate arrests: "It doesn't give us somebody we can go arrest. So what it does is it provides a quicker ability for investigators to focus their time on the right people to talk to."

Committee members asked about vacancies, regional lab arrangements and a pilot wastewater-testing program. Rausch said the lab partnership with the city of Memphis — including two embedded scientists in Jackson funded by Memphis — has worked well and sped regional processing. On wastewater testing, he reported two campus pilot sites and "some pretty eye opening information" with high levels of fentanyl in early samples, and framed testing as a prevention tool for public-health outreach rather than an enforcement method.

After questions, the committee voted to move the TBI budget request to the finance committee.

Sources and provenance: Director Rausch's presentation and Q&A are drawn from committee testimony (see timeline: SEG 1132'SEG 1570).