Crime lab employee speaks against AG Wrigley’s push to put cops in charge of crime lab scientists
MINOT, N.D. — Backlogs at North Dakota’s crime lab have made headlines recently , and Attorney General Drew Wrigley has made it clear that part of his plan to address that situation is to put the crime lab under the jurisdiction of law enforcement.
The North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, specifically.
Wrigley said in an interview that when he speaks to law enforcement, delays at the crime lab are “one of the biggest problems they talk about.”
But Amber Moch, a forensic scientist who works in the crime lab, says that putting scientists under the administration of law enforcement is a bad idea because it will harm the independence of the lab while doing nothing to address delays in processing results.
Both the crime lab and the BCI are under the umbrella of Wrigley’s office, but a separation between the two is mandated by state law.
