Texas County Plans to Clear Property Crime Backlog

A fingerprint examiner for the Travis County sheriff’s office will devote the next six months to clearing a backlog of more than 600 property crime cases that piled up over the past 17 months.

Most of the cases Miguel Cabral Sr. will be examining are break-ins of homes, businesses and cars.

Capt. Frank Lofton tells the Austin American-Statesman that the review of prints for nonviolent property crimes was put on the back burner around May 2013 when one of the four employees who operated the crime lab round the clock retired.

Lofton says they are now training a new hire to replace the retiree and are expanding the crime lab staff after funding was approved for a fifth employee. That frees up Cabral to focus solely on print analysis.