By SDCN Editor
San Diego, CA–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 to help in its continuing efforts to combat impaired driving.
The $542,981 grant will pay for two full-time Crime Lab Criminalist positions specializing in analyzing 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.
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 by the Office of Traffic Safety grant. Lab directors and toxicologists representing 57 of the 58 California counties and the state’s two most populous cities were in attendance. Traffic safety representatives from the Office of Traffic Safety, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, and the California Highway Patrol were also in attendance. This was the second meeting in California and the first since 2017.
Previous Office of Traffic Safety grants expanded the Crime Lab’s blood and alcohol testing capabilities with new equipment, training, and staff.
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 twice the legal limit. Drivers with at least one other impairing substance had an average blood alcohol concentration of 0.14 percent. 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 was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
