RAPID CITY - A new evidence building in Rapid City is nearly finished after a year of construction.

KEVN television reports that the evidence warehouse will provide officers from the Rapid City Police Department and Pennington County Sheriff's Office with three times the storage space as the previous building, which now houses about 20,000 pieces of evidence.

The center also has the only certified latent fingerprint analyst in the state on staff and other highly qualified analysts.

Lab director Richard Bleil says that will allow the lab to run analyses in-house so the departments don't have to send out evidence. External labs and state labs always charge for analysis.

Bleil says that will help make the center self-supporting.

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