Sheriff's Crime Lab certified for top standards in the lab

SAN DIEGO COUNTY – The San Diego County Sheriff's Department is proud to announce a national recognition for its Regional Crime Laboratory.

This certification is from the Organization of Scientific Area Committees. OSAC is a collaborative body of more than 500 forensic science practitioners, industry scholars, lawyers and other experts who represent local, state and federal agencies. They develop, publish and promote rigorous standards to strengthen the practice of forensic science.

To earn this recognition, the Crime Lab implemented OSAC Registry Approved Standards into their everyday practice. Becoming OSAC certified means aligning our protocols to the highest national forensic standards; providing an additional level of confidence in the work the lab performs. It also increases the impact of admissible evidence and expert testimony in the courtroom.

To date, the Sheriff's Crime Lab is among 89 government laboratories in the nation to earn this stringent certification. There are more than 400 publicly funded crime labs in the country eligible to participate in this process.

The Crime Lab's vision is Excellence in Forensic Science. This acknowledgement reaffirms our continued pursuit of providing the highest quality of services to those we serve and exploring ways of always evaluating and improving our processes.

"We congratulate the San Diego Sheriff's Department Crime Laboratory for joining the growing list of laboratories that have begun implementing the nationally recognized forensic science standards listed on the OSAC Registry," said John Paul Jones II, OSAC Program Manager with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "Incorporating these standards into a laboratory's quality system further strengthens the protocols being used and aligns them with national best practices," said Jones.

The Sheriff's Crime Lab currently adheres to more than 400 standards as an expectation under its international accreditation with the ANSI National Accreditation Board, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation's DNA Quality Assurance Standards.

The San Diego County Sheriff's Department Regional Crime Laboratory provides testing and analysis of evidence for the Sheriff's Department and more than 30 other local, state and federal agencies in the county.

In 2021, scientists completed work on more than 15,000 cases across nine forensic disciplines. These services include crime scene response, toxicology, drug identification, DNA analysis, trace evidence, latent print development and comparison, questioned documents and firearms.

The Crime Lab is staffed by 80 managers, forensic scientists, examiners, technicians and professional staff at a state-of-the-art facility in Kearny Mesa.