The Forensic Services Bureau is dedicated to improving drug testing in impaired drivers and ensuring the safety of our roads.
The Ventura County Sheriff's Office Forensic Services Bureau (FSB) has been granted $552,500 by the California Office of Traffic Safety under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This grant, which will last until September 2025, will help to improve the service provided to local law enforcement agencies by reducing casework turnaround times, increasing the sensitivity of our current methods, validating new methods to expand the laboratory testing capability, and forming better expert witnesses to testify in court through staff training. Additionally, overtime funds will help with backlog reduction and faster turnaround times.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Forensic Services Bureau (FSB) is an internationally accredited, full-service, regional crime laboratory supporting all law enforcement agencies in Ventura County. The FSB typically processes over 13,000 cases a year and serves a population of approximately 840,000 people, including cities, unincorporated areas, and state and federal installations.
The majority of DUID samples submitted to the Bureau are from polydrug cases involving drugs of abuse and pharmaceuticals, which require extensive testing. The challenge is further complicated by the necessity for enhanced instrument sensitivity to detect such drugs within their pharmacologically active range. The grant will help the laboratory strengthen its testing capability for DUID cases, allowing it to better handle these cases and report results to local law enforcement agencies and prosecutors. The laboratory will then train law enforcement officers and prosecutors on new drugs so that they may correlate the observed impairment to the drugs detected in the sample and present their cases more effectively. The laboratory will complete the analysis of all backlogged DUID cases that can be analyzed using the newly validated methodology, decreasing the turnaround time for submitted cases.
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