Questions about the operations and efficiency of the San Francisco Police Department crime lab have arisen as DNA analysis automation equipment lies unused six years after purchase.

The machines were purchased with a federal grant, however the lab did not have the infrastructure to implement the equipment. The lab has now secured a $400,000 Homeland Security grant so it can update the software to start using the DNA testing machines in the next eight months.

"Someone in years past wasn't putting all the pieces together," Jim Hammer of the San Francisco Police Commission told KTVU, "so that we had a nice piece of equipment and modern technology but not the software” [to run it].

Source: KTVU