San Francisco

In-line with the rec­om­men­da­tions of the NAS Report, San Francisco is look­ing to remove the crime lab from the police depart­ment. Hopefully more com­mu­ni­ties will come to this conclusion.

A new pro­posal before San Francisco lead­ers seeks to make the city’s crime lab­o­ra­tory inde­pen­dent of the police depart­ment, in light of recent prob­lems that have shut down its drug testing.

The pro­posal before the Board of Supervisors would put the city administrator’s office in charge of the lab. The office already over­sees the med­ical examiner.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi intro­duced the ordi­nance Tuesday.

Both the city’s dis­trict attor­ney and pub­lic defender have called for an inde­pen­dent crime lab since its drug analy­sis unit was shut­tered last month amid sus­pi­cions that a for­mer lab tech­ni­cian was skim­ming cocaine evidence.

Prosecutors have since dis­missed more than 550 drug cases.

Mirkarimi’s pro­posal, if approved, could take effect as soon as July.

Originally posted in the Silicon Valley Mercury News.