State Crime Lab in Milwaukee could soon have a new location

The state crime lab in Milwaukee could have a new place to get its work done. There's a proposal to build a new facility in a business along North 113th and Watertown Plank Rd in Wauwatosa.

"They're building here all the time, I mean, it's still quiet," said Mark Bibb, who didn't expect to hear about possibly having a crime lab as his neighbor.

"It's understandable they need to build a lab, and if it's here, and it's probably more secure back there than anything," Bibb added. The Environmental Impact Statement says it would be a state of the art facility with a variety of active and passive security measures.

The crime lab does controlled substance testing, they exam weapons, and do DNA and Toxicology testing. It's one of three labs in the state and would replace the smaller, outdated one at South 11th and Lapham built in the early 1980s.

It would also be very close to the Wauwatosa Police Department, another benefit listed in the Environmental Impact Statement. The EIS also says current crime lab operations would go into the Wauwatosa location, along with other Department of Justice divisions.

The Department of Justice has yet to return our request for information about what kind of an impact this would have on the crime lab workload. Construction could begin in Spring of 2018 and have an estimated cost of $75 million.