El Paso's police crime lab gets to keep testing the city's drug cases for the next five years.

The crime lab will be ran by a private company, Intergrated Forensic Laboratories, Inc.

The annual cost is about $500,000, a figure has City Rep. Michael Noe saying the county should help pay.



"They should at least chip in. I've got other things I could do with that money," Noe said.



El Paso District Attorney Jaime Esparza disagrees.



"The crime lab is one part of the entire process for a case to get through the justice system," Esparza said. "If you look closely, you'll see that the city pays in certain areas and the county pays in certain areas. The city has traditional paid for analysis of drugs."



But Noe said the state's Department of Public Safety offers a better deal.



"The state will do us the same service at no charge," he said.



The problem with that, Esparza points out, is it could bring the justice system to a crawl.



"It would cause the justice system to slow down greatly," he said.



However, Noe believes the slowdown wouldn't be that bad, and that chances are the El Paso Police Department knows what it's doing when it arrests someone.



"The vast majority of these cases are marijuana. And I'm sorry, I've got a feeling our police officers know the difference between a bag of marijuana and oregano," said Noe.



El Paso police said the average annual drug testing case load for the EPPD crime lab is 915.