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After an LA Times headline like this--"LAPD's fingerprint lab isn't up to the task"--the best response is for the LAPD to start briefing city council members in a public meeting weekly about the fingerprint unit. And that's what the understaffed office is starting to do. It was found last month, via a confidential report obtained by the Times, that the Fingerprint Analysis Unit is woefully understaffed for the amount of work created by crimes and is sometimes too lax with evidence--some has been lost and at least two have been arrested falsely after sloppy work leading to a lawsuit, possibly a class action one. At about the same time this controversy hit the presses, City Controller Laura Chick announced the "disturbing" backlog of 7,000 rape-kits.