Topeka ? For KBI Director Larry Welch, it’s one of those good news, bad news situations.

The good news: Lawmakers gave the Kansas Bureau of Investigation enough money to hire eight agents for the chronically short-staffed agency.

The bad news: Even with the additional agents, it still needs more.

More times than it wants, the KBI must say “no” to sheriffs and police chiefs seeking help on most nonviolent crimes, including the high growth area of computer crimes.

“If they say they’ve got a computer crime involving embezzlement, we can’t respond to that at this time,” Welch said, adding such cases sometimes are referred to a regional federal task force.

Because of the shortage of investigators, the KBI is unable to respond to every case where somebody is suspected of illegally having child pornography on a computer.

“That just breaks my heart. I wish we could respond to every one of those cases,” Welch said.

Since its creation in 1939 to catch bank robbers and cattle rustlers, the KBI has been a small agency. It’s authorized to have 81 agents, not counting supervisory personnel. But in recent years, the number has dwindled.

The shortage built up for several years because, like most state agencies, the KBI has been forced to do more with less money. As result, when agents left or retired, there wasn’t money in the budget to replace them.

At the beginning of the year, the KBI had 64 investigators to cover the state. The Legislature then came up with enough extra money to hire eight more, but that still leaves nine vacancies.

“Don’t get me wrong, we are thrilled with being able to fill eight slots,” Welch said. “But we have to make choices.”

The KBI’s chief role is to assist local law enforcement agencies – 45 percent of which have five or fewer officers.

“Certainly more cases will go unsolved. Anytime we’re not able to provide assistance it will have a negative impact,” Welch said.

For the most part, sheriffs and police chiefs are sympathetic. But it causes them problems, too.

“When they were more fully staffed, they would provide more services,” said Coffey County Sheriff Randy Rogers. “Now it’s back on local law enforcement to suck it up and handle many of the investigations ourselves.

Violent crimes – murder, rape, assaults – still go to the top of the KBI’s must-do list and account for 70 percent of its cases. The KBI lab helped analyze DNA evidence collected in the case against former Kansas State University professor Thomas Murray, who was convicted of murdering his ex-wife, Carmin D. Ross, at her home northwest of Lawrence.

“If it was a homicide, rape, violent crime or major drug trafficking, hopefully we never missed a beat,” Welch said. “But it meant sharply curtailing property crime, fraud and training local law enforcement.”

Guns aren’t the only things criminals use these days. The fastest growing area of crime are those involving computers.

Computers can be used for such crimes as identify theft or embezzlement. They also can be the target of hackers.

They also can be used as evidence, like a marijuana grower who kept a computer log of his crop, including the amount of light and fertilizer used.

Five agents work full-time to investigate computer crimes. But if there’s a murder case or other demands, they leave the hard drive they’re checking and head for the crime scene.

Welch said additional agents mean those working with computers can focus more on their expertise. Even so, he said the KBI could double that number and still have plenty of work for them.

“The backlog of computer crime is big. Without question our major backlog would be computer crime,” he said.

Rogers, president of the Kansas Sheriff’s Assn., said the KBI is quick to help when it can.

“When you have a big crime, you can get the help,” said Rogers, who heads a 13-member department. “But it’s those smaller cases we have on a regular basis that they have to screen and prioritize.”

He recalled a case about 18 months ago involving identity theft using a computer in his county.

“It would have been nice to have them right here, but they didn’t have anybody available at the time,” Rogers said. “We were able to take care of it, but it just took longer.”

Even so, Rogers said he’s not criticizing the KBI.

“I’m one of the biggest fans of the KBI. I just think we take it for granted,” Rogers said. “We really need the Legislature to step up and provide the funds.”

In Stafford County, Sheriff Jeff Parr has a four-member department and counts on the KBI for its expertise.

“When we need help they will be there but it may not be as soon as we might like,” Parr said. “They use to help us on burglaries but they are so short on people now, we don’t ask.”