It’s a notable if not surprising statistic: Of the 7,500 blood samples from suspected drunken drivers that the sheriff’s crime lab tested over a recent 12-month stretch, the people who landed in handcuffs had an average blood-alcohol content of more than twice the legal limit of 0.08% for driving.
The crime lab analyzes DUI tests for 30 agencies in the region and processes several thousand cases a year.
It’s a lot. But earlier this week, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Office announced it had secured a nearly $543,000 grant for its Regional Crime Laboratory, earmarked toward efforts to fight impaired driving. The money is from the state’s Office of Traffic Safety.
The Sheriff’s Office will use this year’s grant money to fund two full-time criminalists in the lab, and those staffers will specialize in analyzing biological samples for drugs and alcohol.
Some of the grant money will go toward the final steps to bring drug toxicology testing in-house at the sheriff’s crime lab, which is slated to start sometime in January. Drug testing has long been outsourced.
Drugs alone cause impaired driving, but sometimes motorists couple drugs and alcohol. Among the DUI drivers who had at least one additional impairing substance from October 2023 through September, the Sheriff’s Office said the average amount of alcohol in their blood was 0.14% — approaching double the legal limit. Most commonly detected in those samples were cannabis, cocaine, methamphetamine, alprazolam (often referred to by its brand name Xanax) and fentanyl.
This year’s grant is roughly $25,000 more than the grant the crime lab received last year from the same source. Prior grants from the Office of Traffic Safety went toward expanding the crime lab’s testing capabilities with new equipment, training and staff.
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