Local News in Brief : Countywide : Crime Lab Begins Move Into Roomier Quarters

The county’s cramped crime laboratory has begun moving to more spacious quarters. The move, which should be finished by August, follows a county grand jury report released Tuesday that called the lab so overcrowded that vital prosecution evidence could be compromised.

“It will make do for a while,” David Bunch, chairman of the grand jury’s public-safety committee, said of the temporary new lab at 601 N. Ross St. in Santa Ana. “But we don’t want (the county) to make this a permanent temporary facility.”

In its report, the grand jury recommended that construction of a permanent lab be under way by next summer. County Administrative Officer Larry Parrish said the crime lab will eventually relocate to a $25-million office building the county plans to construct near the sheriff’s office in Santa Ana.

That facility will be constructed when finances permit, possibly within three to five years, Parrish said. “The Ross Street facility is fully intended to only be temporary quarters.”

The move from the lab’s 19-year-old facility at 550 N. Flower St. in Santa Ana to the Ross Street building will be in three phases, the first two of which will be completed Friday, said Lt. Richard J. Olson, Sheriff’s Department spokesman. Among other things, the latter phase will involve moving drug-analysis equipment, he said.