Cuts Hurting Crime Lab’s Work, Detective Says : Law enforcement: Staff reductions have interfered with investigations, Huntington Beach City Council is told.

HUNTINGTON BEACH —  A police detective, frustrated with backlogs at this city’s crime lab, told the City Council this week that budget cutbacks have hamstrung numerous investigations and could imperil future criminal cases.

Huntington Beach Police Detective Charles E. Nowotny told council members Monday that staff reductions at the lab and yearlong delays in the processing of some fingerprint evidence has interfered with solving burglaries and thefts.

The council members said they were surprised by the contentions, and the city administrator said he would look into the matter.

“We’re not processing evidence. . . . It’s malfeasance,” Nowotny, 49, said during an impassioned plea to the council to consider the consequences of budget cuts. On Tuesday, the 23-year veteran again stressed the importance of quickly processing evidence, and warned that the allegations of shoddy work leveled at the Los Angeles police crime lab could crop up locally.

“You can’t do this, otherwise we’re going to have dire straits like L.A.,” said Nowotny, the department’s employee of the month for October. “All evidence [will be] tainted and guilty people will be walking because the evidence isn’t handled properly.”

Police Chief Ronald E. Lowenberg dismissed any suggestion of sub-par work at his department’s lab. “The level of our employees is superb,” he said. Lowenberg conceded, however, that harsh fiscal realities have cut into the breadth and speed of the lab’s services in recent years.

“Budget cuts have consequences, and this is one of them,” Lowenberg said. Nowotny “has such passion for his work, I know it turns his stomach when we’re forced to do less to serve the community. It drives me crazy too.”

Huntington Beach police and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department are the only two agencies in the county that possess in-house, full-service crime labs. That distinction has long been a source of pride for the department, Lowenberg said, adding that the facility is “an important component in our above-average success as a department.”

But budget cuts cost the lab one of its three full-time employees in 1991, a staff reduction that has made for lengthy delays in evidence processing for lower priority cases.

The lab also has been forced to abandon the routine practice of checking fingerprints from all crime scenes against the state’s vast database of prints. Now, the checks are made only when information is being sought on a specific suspect, officials said.

“We don’t have time for shots in the dark,” police spokesman Lt. Dan Johnson said. “We can’t fish. We have to make some choices.”

Pressing cases--where a suspect is in custody or a trial date looms--are handled quickly and efficiently, Johnson said. Other cases must be prioritized, with violent crimes and cases involving solid leads going to the top of the list. In some lower priority cases, Johnson said, the delays have run more than a year.

Councilman David Sullivan said Tuesday that news of significant backlogs and stalled investigations were a “concern to all the council.”

“If indeed we’re not processing evidence, that’s really disturbing,” Sullivan said. “That was the first the council heard of that.”

Councilman Dave Garofalo also said he is concerned that the city may be making cuts in the wrong places.

“If you want to maintain a safe city, it’s not based on how many people you arrest, but how many people you convict,” Garofalo said Tuesday. “And if you cut out the crime lab and fingerprint operation, we’re not going to be able to solve many crimes.”