BATON ROUGE, La (BRPROUD) – A backlog at the Louisiana State Police (LSP) Crime lab has politicians and officials offering solutions.

The LSP Crime lab is tasked with processing DNA evidence to solve in crimes across the state. The backlog has officials questioning how to move things along. US Senator Bill Cassidy (R) said the lab should extend its hours to process more cases.

“Instead of a specimen taking months or years to be run, they can be run much more timely,” Cassidy said. “My gosh, wouldn’t it be great, you could run it 24/7.”

East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore estimates hundreds of cases need to be processed from his jurisdiction alone. He emphasized that getting the backlog cleared is imperative, but suggests focusing on the retention of their staff.

“Until we are able to get that pay that’s competitive so that they are not picked away by other state agencies or private companies we are still going to be in this same situation even with 24/7,” Moore said.

With help from the federal government, $200,000 were allocated to outsource evidence on gun cases for East Baton Rouge, but Moore estimated that the parish would need a total of $800,000 that to get through all of the backlogs.

“We have been in that process now for two to three months getting our contracts in line and the process in line and hopefully we will be able to start that flow fairly soon,” Moore said.

Moore said that even when the cases are processed from the crime lab, there is even more on the sidelines waiting to be sent.

“That doesn’t include those items waiting in evidence rooms to send back and repopulate the crime lab again,” Moore said.

Cassidy says he will likely draft a bill this spring that will address this problem and give other tools to speed the process.