Features

Gov. seeks $45 million 

SACRAMENTO – Gov. Gray Davis is expected to seek $15 million in next year’s budget for a new state crime lab to analyze DNA and $30 million to help local police improve their own outdated crime labs. 

Sunday’s announcements come as Davis prepares to present his spending priorities Wednesday for the new fiscal year that begins July 1. 

The state’s only existing DNA lab in Berkeley is strained by demand from new laws and new technologies that take advantage of genetic fingerprints, administration officials said Sunday. 

Among the changes that stretch the current system, they said, are a new law giving prison inmates greater leeway to demand DNA tests. Other new laws set up a database to compare DNA from missing persons with DNA from unidentified remains and allow police to match DNA from suspects with samples collected at unsolved crime scenes. 

The officials said Davis will name a selection committee to choose the site and design of the new state lab. 

The $30 million he will propose for local law enforcement crime labs would fund one-time grants to equip, improve or build new labs for jurisdictions that can demonstrate the greatest need, administration officials said on condition they not be named. 

Davis will also propose $75 million to help local police buy the sort of high-tech equipment his aides said is increasingly needed to fight high-tech criminals who rely on computers to create everything from child pornography to instant identities. 

In addition, Davis is expected to seek $11 million dollars to combat identity theft and other high-tech crimes like electronic fraud, counterfeiting, industrial espionage and software and compact disk theft. Together they are projected to cost the state more than $8 billion in lost revenues, wages and taxes each year. 

Of the $11 million, some $3.3 million would go to the state’s five High Technology Crime Task Forces to better train and coordinate with local police, the public and the businesses to fight identity theft. The balance of the funds would expand the High Technology Theft Apprehension and Prosecution Program that helps local law enforcement investigate high-tech crimes. 

Davis also is expected to seek $246.6 million in other aid to local law enforcement, the same amount as in the current year’s budget. 

Of that, $121.3 million is proposed for the COPS (Citizens’ Option for Public Safety) program, which helps hire local police and sheriff’s deputies, build jails, and prosecute criminals. Each of the state’s local law enforcement agencies would get at least $100,000 under the funding proposal. 

The other half of the money would go again to local juvenile crime prevention and treatment programs.