>>So, the department gets the funds, buys and implements the equipment, and then a year or two later the tax dollars decrease (for whatever local reason - economy, mortgage failures, less spending) so there is less money available to pay salaries and it's looking at cutbacks and layoffs...
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>Thank you, Tracy. That explains the machinations of this make-believe agency :-) (Remember that the series is known as "CSI NY" yet on the series "Law and Order" the crime scene dept is called "CSU". Go figure.

The actual explanation for this discrepancy is that the CSI are Cardassian, while the L&O are Goa'uld - not from the same universe. One is from the CBS, the other from NBC.

But as JH once said, there may be about fifteen different polices operating in your street, each specialized for their own kind of crime, and they may as well have their own crime labs (where they develop new stuff, I suppose). Which leads to two conclusions: crime may pay, if you somehow manage to either charge for coordinating their turfs (turves?) where they overlap or if you invent a new kind of crime for which none of them are specialized yet.