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Oregon's BJA FY 2024 Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grant Program - Competitive

Award Information

Award #
15PBJA-24-GG-03289-COVE
Funding Category
Competitive Discretionary
Location
Awardee County
936001779.
Congressional District
Status
Awarded, but not yet accepted
Funding First Awarded
2024
Total funding (to date)
$500,000

Description of original award (Fiscal Year 2024, $500,000)

The Oregon State Police (OSP), Forensic Services Division (FSD) provides scientific, technical and investigative support to the criminal justice system through the collection and forensic analysis of evidence. The division, accredited by American National Standards Institute (ANSI) National Accreditation Board (ANAB) to the ISO:IEC 17025:2017, provides the state's only full-service forensic laboratory system. The division provides services to all criminal justice agencies from its five forensic laboratories located in Portland, Springfield, Central Point, Bend, and Pendleton. There are 141 authorized positions in the division.

For many years, the OSP FSD Laboratory has been under pressure by the legal and scientific community to analyze blood specimens for driving under the influence of intoxicants (DUII) casework where drugs other than alcohol are suspected. Currently Oregon is a "urine state" that only analyzes urine specimens for drugs in DUII cases. Urine specimens are useful for determining if a drug was consumed at some point in the relatively recent past, but the detected drugs are not active when in the urine. For this reason, the specimens are not quantitated to determine their concentration in the body. Drugs in blood specimens, however, contain drugs that are active in the body and can be quantitated to determine the concentration of each drug. Oregon is one of only a few, if not the last remaining state, still lacking a statewide program that analyzes DUII evidence for the presence of drugs in blood. The FSD toxicology unit is currently receiving 1,170 requests of all toxicology types per month, or 14,000 requests per year and of these requests, 2,200 (annually) are DUII urine specimens and 3,200 (annually) are blood alcohol requests.

The FSD is proposing to use grant funds for the purchase of an additional Liquid Chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS-MS) instrument for increased specimen capacity and redundancy to be used for both post-mortem drugs in blood requests and all DUII drugs in blood requests, and administrative costs.

Date Created: September 27, 2024