“Surely you don’t think the police departments are going to hire the best and brightest for their forensics lab, do you? Those billets will go to union thugs with a GED and loyal service to some Trumka flunkie.”
Keep in mind that the NY and LV labs that you see are among the best funded and staffed labs in the US, if not the world. It is incredibly prestigious to work for either of them. Other labs definitely don’t have all that “cool stuff” and super-smart people. In “flyover country”, the “forensics lab” might consist of a fingerprint kit and some bottles of casting plastic for tire tracks, operated by a guy who took a few courses after high school...
I think the main problem is the corruption in the sciences today. Climate “science” is completely corrupted, and it’s a short jump to politically corrupt the crime labs in order to clear up all those criminal cases for the DA.