Crime & Safety
Deputies Seeing Success in Latest Crime Lab Technologies
The expedited latent fingerprint program gets results to detectives fast and DNA evidence is successfully linking crimes to suspects.
From the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Lost Hills Station:
In 2009, the cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Malibu and Westlake Village partnered with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Crime Lab to begin an expedited latent fingerprint program.
Due to the amount of evidence processed at the Crime Lab, it can take a few months for fingerprints and evidence lifted from crime scenes to be processed. Since introducing the expedited program, we now get results back in two to four weeks.
Fingerprint technician Sharona Kay has had a tremendous amount of success in assisting detectives from Lost Hills Station with matching fingerprints to suspects. By getting fingerprint matches back in a timely manner, detectives have been able to efficiently and effectively charge and convict suspects of crimes in the area.
In September of 2011, Kay attended training in which she was taught how to retrieve DNA evidence from qualifying property crimes. In the past year alone, Kay has successfully matched nine out of 14 blood samples retrieved from crime scenes. For more information on this program, please contact LET Sharona Kay at the Lost Hills Sheriff's Station (818) 878-1808.
Lost Hills Sheriff's Station polices the Cities of Agoura Hills, Calabasas, Hidden Hills, Malibu and Westlake Village, and the unincorporated communities of Chatsworth Lake Manor, Malibu Lake, Topanga, and West Hills.
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