Editorial: The price of shortchanging law enforcement

The Florida Legislature needs to give cash-starved state law enforcement agencies a serious financial boost. Agencies ranging from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles lack the money to perform their duties in a timely fashion or keep experienced workers, who are lured away by employers that offer higher salaries. Gov. Rick Scott and state lawmakers have spent years cutting taxes, and as the economy brightens and revenue rises it is time to make smart investments in improving law enforcement rather than just talking tough on crime.

The Tampa Bay Times reported last week that Florida's law enforcement agencies have systemic fiscal problems that have compromised their performance and left them unable to operate efficiently. The FDLE, for example, performs crime analyses for most counties around the state at no cost. But with fewer analysts and higher caseloads, the agency now takes up to 85 days to process evidence such as DNA samples, up from 74 days in recent years. Chemistry evidence requests, fingerprint analysis and computer evidence evaluations now take twice as long to complete. Separately, Attorney General Pam Bondi drew attention earlier this month to the thousands of rape kits that sit untested in evidence rooms around the state because of backups at FDLE crime labs.

Fed up with FDLE's slow pace, some Florida counties have set up their own crime labs. Pinellas County runs its crime lab at a cost of $1.1 million a year, a tab that is far too expensive for many counties that depend on the state to provide those services. Growth in public and private crime labs has contributed to staff retention problems at the FDLE, which lost 127 crime lab analysts and supervisors in the last six years to higher-paying jobs. Crime analysts in Tallahassee make an average of $39,370 a year, some $20,000 less than the national average, the Times reported. Retention also is an issue at the Florida Highway Patrol, which is losing experienced troopers to local departments because it can't offer competitive wages.

State law enforcement agency leaders are asking the Legislature for money to address the issues exacerbated by continued underfunding. FDLE Commissioner Richard Swearingen wants a $34.8 million budget increase, which would include pay raises for crime lab analysts and supervisors, facilitate the hiring of new employees and replace old lab equipment. The FHP, which is set to receive $5,000 raises for troopers in six counties, wants more money to help replace aging vehicles. These are reasonable requests that lawmakers should honor as they sift through demands on a projected $635 million budget surplus in 2016.

Tax cuts make for good headlines. But it is irresponsible to continue to cut taxes at the expense of public safety and an efficient criminal justice system. And it is hypocritical for a Legislature to boast it is tough on crime as it undercuts the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies by failing to invest in them.