Things Worse in San Francisco than First Thought

So not only was there a super­vi­sor with a crim­i­nal back­ground, who was sup­pos­edly steal­ing drugs from cases, but the drug sec­tion in gen­eral is appar­ently run like a third-world sweat­shop. Employees there have a work load 5 — 7 times what is nor­mal for California.

“The lab will not reopen until cor­rec­tive mea­sures are taken to make sure that we’re in full com­pli­ance with the rec­om­men­da­tions that were put together by the Department of Justice,” Gascon said.

Gascon said he was not sure how long that would be, but that the Police Department would con­tinue to make drug arrests and that drug cases would con­tinue to be prosecuted.

Drug evi­dence is cur­rently being sent to out­side labs for testing.

In addi­tion to staffing con­cerns, the audit found prob­lems with the doc­u­men­ta­tion of “chain-of-custody,” with regard to keep­ing proper records of trans­fers of drug evi­dence between ana­lysts at the lab. It also found incon­sis­ten­cies in records kept on the reg­u­lar cal­i­bra­tion of lab equip­ment; improper seal­ing and stor­age of drug evi­dence; and chem­i­cals not prop­erly labeled with haz­ardous warn­ing labels.

The audit also noted that lab staff were not up to date with required train­ing and infre­quently attended pro­fes­sional meet­ings to keep abreast of cur­rent technology.

Further, the lab does not have ade­quate space to han­dle the vol­ume of drug evi­dence, and clean­ing sup­plies and cab­i­nets are stored in the hall­ways, the audit stated.

Lab employ­ees are given 48 hours to ana­lyze drug evi­dence so pros­e­cu­tors can charge those recently arrested.

That short time frame, com­bined with an annual case­load of more than 14,000 cases and a lim­ited staff of two to three ana­lysts, “cre­ates an unten­able sit­u­a­tion and directly affects the qual­ity of the ana­lyt­i­cal work,” the audi­tors wrote.

“Good lab­o­ra­tory prac­tices have been repeat­edly short-changed in favor of high case through­put,” the audit stated.

The audit noted that while the aver­age case­load for a crime lab ana­lyst in California was slightly more than 1,000 cases per year, San Francisco crime lab ana­lysts take on 5,000 to 7,000 cases per year. And while the aver­age turn­around for results is expected to be between one and 20 days, San Francisco requires a max­i­mum two-day turnaround.

Originally posted on KTVU Channel 2’s web­site. (My favorite TV sta­tion as a child by the way).