KBI names new laboratory director

Price will oversee the KBI’s four laboratories located in Topeka, Great Bend, Kansas City and Pittsburg. His responsibilities include managing the KBI’s approximately 90 laboratory professionals.

“As lab director, T.L. Price will be instrumental in developing strategies to ensure quality and timely service to KBI customers, while leading the forensic science community into the future,” said KBI Director Kirk Thompson.

Price was recently appointed acting laboratory director upon Michael Van Stratton’s retirement in December 2016. Van Stratton had served as KBI lab director for the past 20 years.

In total Price brings 25 years of forensic science experience to his new role. He had been assistant laboratory director since 2014. Price first joined the KBI as a criminalist technician in 1992, and graduated from Washburn University in 1993. He then worked for a few years as a criminalist in the Fort Worth Police Department Criminalistics Laboratory before returning to the KBI’s Firearms and Tool Mark section in 1996.

Additionally, Price has served as a past president of the Association of Firearms and Tool Mark Examiners (AFTE) and has 17 years of experience assessing lab programs as an American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB) international program assessor. As project manager, he also guided construction of the state of the art KBI Forensic Science Center which opened in November 2015 on the Washburn University campus.

“I look forward to collaborating with the many partners who depend on KBI lab services, and in continuing the tradition of service and reliability expected of our laboratory system,” said Price.

“Forensic science is a rapidly progressing field due to constant advances in technology. We’re confident T.L. Price is well prepared to address these diverse challenges for the KBI,” Thompson said.