After years of planning, and even longer lobbying from local law enforcement, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension is set to build a new regional crime lab in southern Minnesota.
The BCA came out as one of the big winners in this year’s bonding bill at the Minnesota Legislature. Minnesota borrows money, or bonds, to pay for public infrastructure projects — in this case lawmakers approved $67 million in bonding dollars for a regional lab in Mankato.
The lab is celebrated by public safety officials and lawmakers alike, but it also underscores a burgeoning need for more sophisticated tools to combat evolving crime in Minnesota.
“Our partners have a closer location to drop off evidence, to connect and to get the services they utilize with the BCA,” BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said.
The new 56,000-square-foot facility is expected to go up just north of the Blue Earth County Justice Center on the east side of Mankato.
It will house about 50 agents once it’s up and running, featuring everything from DNA evidence testing to a digital crime lab, the first time the BCA has specifically designed rather than retrofitted space for cyber crimes, according to Evans.
The lab will also have training areas for city and county law enforcement as well as potential space for financial crimes investigators in the future, he said.
“The complexity of crime continues to be a challenge for us across the board in law enforcement,” he said. “That’s why you bring in some of these specialties to assist our partners so they don’t have to be experts in everything.”