The Gilbert Police Department is covered for now when it needs crime lab services for its cases through a partnership with the Mesa Police Department.
But that arrangement is concerning to Gilbert Police Chief Michael Soelberg when he looks at the region’s population growth and the trend of increasing violent crime in the town, even when Gilbert is rated the second safest large city in the country per FBI statistics.
“Mesa does still do a good job, but my concern is as we look at the build-out of Gilbert, we look at our violent crime rate going up, I do not want to be in a situation where we are letting our citizens down,” Soelberg told town council and executive staff at a workshop Dec. 11. “We're not providing the services that they need because we're relying on somebody else plus the dark cloud over us that who knows what the future's going to bring.”
That is why Soelberg is pushing a previous needs assessment finding that Gilbert needs its own crime lab. In his view, it is the kind of proactive move the town took when it won approval to build its own Public Safety Training Facility. A bond for that facility passed in 2018, and the facility opened in 2021.
“Thank God we got our training facility done because right when we opened Phoenix told us, ‘Sorry, we don't have the capacity to train anymore. You guys are out, along with everyone else,’” Soelberg said. “(I) just talked to the Mesa chief over the weekend. They're at full capacity. So now they're telling the other agencies they can't take them on as well.
“I don't want that to be us knocking on doors in five years asking other crime labs to please let us in and take care of us. So we have the opportunity now to invest in the future.”
It is a large investment, and the costs keep going up with rampant construction inflation. Soelberg said the town estimates it will cost $70 million to build such a lab just for Gilbert.
However, the town prefers a larger version that would accommodate future growth and allow it to provide services to other agencies in the meantime. Queen Creek and Apache Junction have been identified as likely partners. That version would cost $81 million.
Those price tags are the estimates if Gilbert passes a bond for funding in 2024. Soelberg said the prices likely escalate about $5 million for every year the town waits.
Then it would cost about $3.2 million per year to run it, just for Gilbert.
"Crime labs are not cheap to operate,” Soelberg said. “There's a lot of technology that goes into that, a lot of the supplies, between utilities and the supplies. It's an expensive process, but it's an essential process to make sure that we keep our communities safe and that we properly investigate, document and prosecute cases.”
The payoff is in the courtroom. Soelberg cited statistics that show that charges are 21 times more likely be filed in homicide cases with forensic evidence than without. Convictions in rape cases go from 66.7% to 87.3% depending on forensic evidence. And robbery cases being resolved through a plea deal go from 32% to 68%.
Even processing on property crimes is important in Soelberg’s view.
“A lot of times those criminals that evolve into rape, robbery, home invasions, they're starting with property crimes,” he said. “And so by getting them identified and ideally getting them arrested, you're preventing that future, more serious crime from happening.”
The town also is seeing an increasing turnaround time in getting its evidence processed at the lab as the demand on the Mesa lab increases over time, Soelberg said. And as Gilbert does not run the lab, it cannot prioritize the cases. Its cases must wait in queue until Mesa is ready do the testing.
The town did look at alternatives, but Soelberg detailed how those fall short of what is needed.
Chandler is building a crime lab, but Soelberg said that situation would be much the same for Gilbert as with Mesa in the long term.
The Department of Public Safety is required to provide some crime lab services for municipalities, but it doesn’t do all that are needed. It does not even touch processing property crimes.
Federal labs will do work if terrorism is involved.
A public-private partnership was not feasible at all with delays and additional costs for shipping or flying in experts to testify at trial.
But the costs are a concern to council members.
“The crime lab, I still have a lot of heartburn over,” Mayor Brigette Peterson said. “I (found it) a lot easier to convince (residents) on the public safety training facility than I have been on the crime lab.”
Peterson said she sees the need for it, but it will be important that any partners like Apache Junction and Queen Creek are paying comparable fees for it if Gilbert is going to build it and bring them in to use it.
The crime lab was one part of a larger discussion on prioritizing town capital improvement projects for police, fire and parks and recreation.
Council will consider in the coming year how much the town can pay for and how to fund those projects, possibly through a combination of proposals for a bond and increasing the sales tax.
We would like to invite our readers to submit their civil comments, pro or con, on this issue. Email AZOpinions@iniusa.org. Tom Blodgett can be reached by email at tblodgett@iniusa.org or follow him @sp_blodgett on X.
Meet Tom Tom Blodgett joined Independent Newsmedia, Inc., USA, in 2022, when the company acquired Community Impact Newspaper's Phoenix-area properties. Raised in Arizona, he has spent more than 35 years in journalism in the state.
Community: He has served as an instructional professional in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication since 2005, and is editorial adviser to The State Press, the university's independent student media outlet. He also is director of operations for an 18U girls fastpitch softball team from Gilbert.
Education: Arizona State University with a BS in Journalism.
Random Fact: He lived in Belgium during his freshman year of high school.
Hobbies: Tweeting enthusiastically about ASU softball (season-ticket holder) and grumpily about other local sports (pessimistic fan).
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