The state forensic lab that examines evidence from crime scenes recently cleared a years-old backlog and improved its response times by leaps and bounds.
"We've made great progress," said lab director Guy Vallaro.
The Connecticut Police Chiefs Association recognized the lab Tuesday for its work on improving response times and helping police departments across Connecticut.
Police said they had gotten used to yearslong response times on evidence and DNA processing.
Now the average is down to 60 days.
“We became more outward looking, asking our customers what it is that they want from us and we have a great management team here that was built," said Vallaro, "and they do a lot of this work and go out and as some of the chiefs said, we were doing the work before they called us up."
The state has reduced the backlog entirely in all major areas including DNA, firearms, toxicology and computer crimes. The agency expects to have fingerprints completed by next month.
