Following a press conference with the Missouri State Highway Patrol, plans are moving forward for a new collaborative crime lab with Southeast Missouri State University.
Friday, March 20, 2026, state and university officials announced plans for a new Troop E crime laboratory to be built across from the entrance to SEMO’s main campus in Cape Girardeau. The facility will expand forensic services for more than a dozen counties in southeast Missouri.
Scott White, captain and director of public information for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, said this new crime lab will provide several key forensic services for criminal investigations across the region. This comes as a new addition to their main crime lab and a few other satellite locations.
“What they do is DNA, drug chemistry, latent prints, and toxicology,” White said. “The Highway Patrol has one main lab here in Jefferson City, and then we have the seven satellite crime lab locations throughout the state.”
White shared that SEMO donated the land to make this project possible.
“The land donation was from SEMO, from the university, and we couldn’t be more grateful for that. While this will remain a Missouri State Highway Patrol crime lab operated by our personnel, we feel that being located there at the campus provides the opportunity for students and the community to better understand the role of forensic science and how our crime lab plays, especially in modern law enforcement,” White said.
One of the goals of the new lab is to foster a collaboration between SEMO and the Highway Patrol. This would include chances for students on campus to engage in lab work.
“Ideally, what we would like to see over time is that the location may create some opportunities for future collaborations or even educational engagement that could benefit the students here at SEMO, who are interested in pursuing careers in the crime lab or public safety or forensic science,” White said.
According to White, the project is still in the early planning stages, and details for the new facility haven’t been finalized yet.
“We know that the current lab is just down the street from what is going to be the new location. So this is just one of many steps. We don’t have any blueprints, we don’t have any renditions of what this is going to look like yet, but we’re pretty excited that this is the beginning of a great chapter for the crime lab down there in Cape Girardeau,” White said.
Even though it's just the beginning, White shared he hopes that this new lab will expand forensic services in Missouri and help investigators move cases forward more quickly, providing faster answers for victims and their families.
“There’s a very personal aspect to it, and that’s not only because of the crime victims, but the people that work there. And those lab employees, more than most people we feel, know that behind every piece of evidence is somebody waiting for those answers. And we believe that this new lab directly addresses those challenges we face,” White said. “Labs all across the nation, not only us, are facing growing caseloads and increasing demand. So we feel that by expanding our capacity here in SEMO, we’re improving the efficiency for those investigations, which results in what we feel is giving those faster results to the victims.”