Columbia’s Top Cop Talks Drug Lab Options

(WOLO) COLUMBIA,S.C, — “The lab has identified an issue that needs to be addressed immediately, but we have the ability to take pause, and take a breath as we plan future lab endeavors.” But taking pause was the last thing on some of city council members minds as they listened to five of chief holbrooks’ primary options. many wanting to forgo the possibility of temporarily joining forces with richland county in a drug analysis partnership and focus on a long term goal to get a state of the art facility to handle the 12 to 15 thousand drug cases columbia sees annually. A move Mayor Steve Benjamin says he couldn’t disagree with more. “We ought to always look at partnering with our fellow agencies first before we look at spending one dime of tax payers dollars. Council decided to do the opposite of that today and i think it’s a mistake.” Mayor Benjamin says he wholeheartedly supports whatever the Chief thinks is the best option and believes – at this point Chief Holbrook is the only person who really has any knowledge of what the police department truly needs. “There have been some mis-steps in the past . He does not own them, but he does own the responsibility to fix them. He’s laid out a clear path for how that can be done and we need to empower him and give him the resources to get it done and get out of his way.” City Manager Teresa Wilson says those resources are there. 300 thousand dollars already budgeted for this year. Whether that money is used to hire 2 new chemists and a part time marijuana examiner needed in the City or toward a new facility remains to be seen. Holbrook says his priority would be the immediate improvement of evidence storage facilities to give the city more space, proper air quality and increased refrigeration for seized evidence that essentially needs to be protected indefinitely.