Nassau tab for drug-evidence tests: $1M

The Nassau police crime lab scandal has cost the county about $1 million so far as it continues to ship old and new drug evidence out of state for forensic testing.

The county has paid NMS Labs in Willow Grove, Pa., $916,190 for work once done at the police lab since County Executive Edward Mangano closed the Nassau facility last February.

About $450,000 of the total paid by Nassau to NMS covered the cost of retesting felony drug evidence collected between 2007 and 2010, said Mangano spokeswoman Katie Grilli-Robles.

The rest of the payments to NMS were for testing new drug evidence.

NMS has retested 1,200 old cases so far, with about 1,800 old cases still to be tested. The county also plans to retest some evidence from misdemeanor drug cases.

"We can't speculate as to when exactly all testing will be completed," Grilli-Robles said. "It is imperative that this process be done correctly to restore the public's trust and faith in forensic testing."

First Deputy Police Commissioner Thomas Krumpter said Nassau will keep shipping evidence to NMS but hopes to transfer all the testing to the medical examiner's office by year's end.

"The county executive's mandate is that we do it right," Krumpter said.

The medical examiner's office is managing the functions that once belonged to the police lab.

Police forfeiture funds -- assets seized in criminal cases -- paid for retesting old cases, Grilli-Robles said. Police operating funds paid to test drug evidence in new cases.

Cases in questionIn December 2010, a private accrediting agency placed the lab on probation. Mangano, in consultation with District Attorney Kathleen Rice, closed the lab after learning about faulty drug evidence testing.

A November 2011 report by state Inspector General Ellen Biben stated NMS had found inconsistencies in drug evidence in more than 10 percent of the cases it retested.

Biben's report recommended retesting should be expanded to include all disciplines -- including fingerprints at crime scenes, ballistics, hair and clothing fibers. Plans to do so are under way.

"I think it was very evident from the report that it was terrible what happened there," said Thomas Dale, Nassau's new police commissioner. "I felt very embarrassed for the Nassau County Police Department."

Dale, hired after the scandal erupted, said he would have hoped more police department employees had been aware of the lab's failings.

The lab shutdown has unleashed dozens of court filings on pending cases and past convictions. Nassau judges have thrown out convictions in two cases, saying they were based on unreliable lab evidence.

Joseph Lo Piccolo, president of the Nassau Criminal Courts Bar Association, criticized the county's spending on drug testing.

"The reality is that $1 million on retesting shows how inefficient and costly the lack of local and state oversight of the lab has truly cost this county," Lo Piccolo said. "We could only hope our streets would have been safer if that $1 million had been spent on better equipment for our police, gun buyback programs or alternatives to crime for our youth."

Plans to build new labThe county plans to build a new lab run by civilian scientists in New Cassel. In December, Mangano named former New York State homeland security czar Michael Balboni to head an advisory board to oversee planning for the new lab.

Balboni said he has been researching construction costs of crime labs in other states. The Nassau legislature has approved $3.87 million for design and construction of the planned lab.

"There is no timeline for the lab construction," Balboni said.

Balboni said once the design phase is complete, the county will seek construction bids. He said he expects "interplay" with the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, which took control of the county's finances last January.

Balboni said there are plans to secure grants from the state and the Department of Justice to help pay for the lab.

With Matthew Chayes