We are the real-life Crime Scene Investigators (CSI).
The police focus on tracking down, interrogating, and arresting suspects; the District Attorney concentrates on prosecuting those who are indicted; we concentrate on the evidence used to make those arrests and prosecutions.
The more than 200 people who make up the Association of Criminalists for the California Department of Justice (AC-DOJ) perform a variety of highly specialized forensic work that local and federal agencies have come to rely on in the pursuit of criminals within their jurisdictions.
Our members divide roughly into 10 specialties:
- Crime scene response (homicides, sexual assaults)
- DNA (processing and database)
- Blood alcohol
- Clandestine lab response
- Firearms and tool marks
- Latent prints (fingerprints)
- Digital evidence (mobile device & computer analysis)
- Questioned-document examinations (forgeries)
- Solid-dosage drug analysis
- Trace analysis
- Toxicology
We are the crime labs for 48 of California’s 58 counties and our members’ testimony in trials is often the make-or-break moment in a case.
