Regional Crime Lab Grant
December 26, 2024 – San Diego County Sheriff’s Office officials report that the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office Regional Crime Laboratory has received more than half a million dollars from the California Office of Traffic Safety (OTS) to help in its continuing efforts to combat impaired driving.
The $542,981 grant will be used to pay for two full-time Crime Lab Criminalist positions specializing in the analysis of biological samples for the presence of drugs and alcohol.
The grant will also fund overtime for Criminalists to assist in maintaining current forensic alcohol testing operations while completing the final steps to bringing in-house drug toxicology testing to the Sheriff's Crime Lab in January 2025.
On December 2, the San Diego County Sheriff's Office hosted a statewide Toxicology Stakeholders Meeting at the Sheriff's Crime Lab in Kearny Mesa. The event was made possible thanks to the OTS grant. Lab directors and toxicologists representing 57 of the 58 California counties and the state's two most populous cities were in attendance. Also invited were traffic safety representatives from the Office of Traffic Safety, National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the California Highway Patrol. This was the second such meeting to be held in California and the first since 2017.
Previous OTS grants expanded the Crime Lab’s blood and alcohol testing capabilities with new equipment, training and staff.
A reminder: December is National Impaired Driving Prevention Month. From December 11 through January 1, 2025, Sheriff's Deputies are conducting increased impaired driving patrols across San Diego County. If you are caught driving under the influence, you will go to jail. Impaired driving does not just mean alcohol. It can be over-the-counter medication, prescription drugs, cannabis, and illegal substances. Using new equipment, Sheriff's Criminalists can better identify and determine the concentration of drugs and other impairing substances in DUI samples.
Of the 7,500 samples tested during the previous grant period (October 1, 2023, through September 30, 2024), those arrested had an average blood alcohol concentration that was more than twice the legal limit. Drivers arrested with at least one other impairing substance had an average blood alcohol concentration of 0.14% The drugs most commonly detected in the blood samples were cannabis, cocaine, methamphetamine, Xanax, and fentanyl.
The Sheriff's Crime Lab provides forensic science services to more than 30 law enforcement agencies in San Diego County. It processes more than 7,000 traffic safety cases per year.
The grant program runs through September 2025. Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Source: San Diego County Sheriff’s Office