Dna: Whose Is It, the Orange County Crime Lab's or the District 7*

Because of political unrest in the Sheriff's Department in 2007-08, the management structure of the Orange County Crime Lab changed from being solely the Sheriff's responsibility to a temporary shared management structure, known as the Cooperating Department Head Structure, composed of the Sheriff, the District Attorney, and the County CEO. Despite the unsettled management structure and the recent loss of the OCCL lab director, resulting in lowered morale, the crime lab has been able to meet its overall goals of reducing backlogged DNA requests and turnaround times while remaining the leader in submitting the largest number of DNA cold hits than any other California crime lab. Response: Disagrees partially with the finding. The cooperating department head structure was established by the Board of Supervisors on October 28, 2008, based on recommendations made by the Stakeholders Panel on DNA Testing, to act as the head of the County's forensic services operations. The Board of Supervisors requested future updates related to the CEO recommendations adopted, but did not indicate that the approved recommendations were temporary. The crime lab has been able to meet its overall goals of reducing backlogged DNA requests and turnaround times due to the creation and implementation of the DNA case triage system. The DNA triage system maximizes communication among the County's law enforcement partners and allocates the limited DNA resources of the forensic laboratory, law enforcement, and the prosecution to effectively reduce the crime lab's DNA backlog. In addition, the 2008 National Institute of Justice (NIJ) DNA Backlog Reduction grant provided resources contributing to the reduction of the backlog of DNA property crimes awaiting analysis and lowered turnaround times. Responses to Recommendations R.2 through R.5