FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 8, 2025
TCSO Forensic Services Unit Moves Into New Building
Forensic Science has changed greatly over the last several decades thanks to technological advancements. Just 20 years ago, TCSO’s Crime Lab Unit, as it was called, was comprised of 5 employees. The team rotated on-call duties and responded to 6-10 crime scenes a month. Deputies working the streets would collect evidence. Eventually, some of them were trained in forensic evidence collection and came to work in the Crime Lab Unit.
Things are a lot different now. Nearly all of TCSO’s Forensic Services employees are scientists and they respond to 25-30 crime scenes a month.
For many years, TCSO’s crime lab and evidence warehouse were housed at East Command on Burleson Manor Road. The volume of evidence preserved there grew so much that three warehouses were constructed on that campus to handle the volume.
The East Command building was not designed for forensic sciences and years of modification simply couldn’t turn into the kind of space necessary for advanced forensic services.
In the new facility, which is located on the Travis County Correctional Complex campus, TCSO can conduct presumptive tests and visual analysis. Some of that work includes latent prints, the use of alternate light sources, digital forensic imaging, chemical processing, and Blue Star tests for the presence of human blood. The new building also has a secure garage bay with a lift which will allow Crime Scene Specialists to process vehicles with a significantly higher level of safety and ease.
The building’s state-of-the-art warehouse facility secures and stores evidence at the highest industry standards. It also has an evidence processing area where deputies will securely package, label and inventory evidence they have collected. This maintains the chain of custody of evidence from beginning to end.
Sheriff Sally Hernandez said, “We have a lot to be proud of in this new facility. It’s a significant leap forward. But a building with a bunch of technical gadgets in it is nothing without the right people doing this critical work. TCSO’s team of scientists and technicians are absolutely exceptional, and they make me so proud. Today we cut crime scene tape to celebrate this new building, but this team deserves our appreciation and applause. They work tirelessly, day and night, doing painstaking work for the sake of victims.”
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Submitted By:
Kristen Dark, Sr. Public Information Officer | (512) 854-4986
Drew Knight, Public Information Specialist | (512) 854-8426