Someone who works inside the Houston Police Department’s crime lab reached out to 11 News Monday. Because this employee said there are serious problems.

Problems that could lead to blown cases.

Killers could get away and innocent people could be convicted.

A crime lab employee believes this information could lead to a firing, so our source asked us to protect their identity, and we agreed.

History is not just words on a page, but something we are supposed to learn from.

Not at HPD it seems.  

"I think that we find ourselves moving back into the conspiracy of silence,” the current crime lab employee told 11 News

We protected the scientist’s identity.

Because this employee still works in the HPD crime lab and has for years.

Now is also a voice from the inside.

"The overall atmosphere is if you make a mistake we are gonna hide it,” the source told 11 News.

A crime lab’s foundation is integrity. Integrity of the evidence and of its people.

The foundation of integrity is proficiency testing.

Now questioned by former employee J. Phillips, who sparked the ongoing internal investigation.

She’s also talked only with 11 News, saying a manager went too far with employees taking the required exam.

"Advising them on how to handle this particular item. She actually said that she is not going to send an email out because she doesn't want there to be a paper trail,” Phillips told 11 News in a previous interview.

Phillips quit over it, but the allegations of cheating, and the internal affairs investigation, is taking its toll.

"There is a part of me that wants to believe that they will do the right thing,” the current lab employee told 11 News. “But every day that I go in and don't see anything that has changed, I grow less hopeful."

The evidence of errors at the HPD crime lab, uncovered by 11 News five years ago, made history.

As a result, hundreds of cases are being re-tested. Another set of hearings underway.

Prisoner after prisoner set free and declared to be innocent.

Those troubles were supposed to be history when the lab's DNA section reopened in November of 2005.

"We are there to serve and we fight to make sure that what we are doing is forensically sound,” the current HPD lab scientist said. “And it seems like there are people there who have forgotten why they became scientists in the first place."

The justice system depends on trust. Justice depends on evidence.

"Yes, I truly believe there could be error,” the former lab employee J. Phillips said.

Now trust itself in question at the lab.

"If I knew that someone I loved was going to be processed through there I would be worried,” the current lab staffer said.

A voice from the inside that is afraid.

Afraid that history is repeating.

Meanwhile, the department continues to refuse 11 News requests for interviews on this topic citing the ongoing internal investigation.

But we have not stopped digging.

11 News has a box filled with thousands of pages of HPD crime lab documents.

That’s only part of what we asked for.

It may turn out to be evidence of what could be a pattern of problems in the new crime lab.