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The New Orleans Police Department says its new crime lab won't be fully operational until 2027.
The already overworked Louisiana State Police crime lab in Baton Rouge is handling the NOPD's backlog of untested DNA samples, but only a few at a time.
New Orleans has a backlog of nearly 100,000 unprocessed DNA samples collected at crime scenes and from victims.
Fewer than 300 of the samples are sent to the state for testing every year.
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