On Saturday, December 8th, at about 2:30 am, a female motorist traveling south-bound on the I-5 in San Juan Capistrano was involved in a single vehicle accident and became stranded. As she attempted to call for assistance, a male subject stopped and offered to assist her. Instead, he sexually assaulted her and left her alone at the side of the freeway. Sheriff’s Deputies assigned to Patrol Operations responded and immediately rendered aid to the victim and initiated the search for the suspect. Investigators from the Sheriff’s Sex Crimes Bureau met with the victim at the hospital and began an immediate investigation of the crime. Investigators analyzed evidence left at the scene and information provided by the victim. Within a couple of days of the assault, investigators identified a person of interest. After a brief surveillance and additional evaluation of evidence, the team wrote a search warrant for the suspect’s vehicle and residence.  

During the evening hours of Tuesday, December 11th, a mere three days after the horrendous assault, Sheriff’s Investigators introduced themselves to San Juan Capistrano resident Alejandro Leyva and arrested him for the I-5 rape. Investigators forwarded to Sheriff’s Forensic Science Services a sample of Leyva’s DNA. Within 36 hours, the Forensics experts were successful in matching Leyva’s DNA to evidence found at the crime scene.    

On Thursday, December 13, 2007, the case was submitted to the District Attorney’s office for consideration.  Upon review, the DA initially filed 6 felony counts against Leyva.  Additional charges may be filed later and Leyva could be facing life imprisonment for this assault.  

The early identification and arrest of Alejandro Leyva for this horrific crime is yet another example of the incredible work performed by the Sheriff’s Sex Crimes Bureau, Forensics Science Services and other members of this department on a daily basis. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim of this senseless act, and our appreciation and thanks are offered to all of those professionals who have worked and continue to work on this case.

Director Dean Gialamas talked with KUCI's Mari Frank last week. The interview's below. For more information on DNA and Forensic Services, click right here.

(Note: Updates from Nov 8th included below) 

This blog was created to keep you and the community educated and informed on issues, activities and events related to our Department.  I was recently informed Supervisor John Moorlach is questioning not only the appropriateness of a county-paid trip in April 2007, but he is also questioning the integrity of those of us who went on the trip. Sheriff Carona, other key department members and I traveled to Lyon, France and London, England to view numerous law enforcement programs and systems in person.  The trip involved an aggressive schedule of meetings and conferences so that it would be as productive as possible.

This trip was never intended nor reported to be solely for the purpose of reviewing DNA laboratories.  We looked at numerous programs that had potential application to and could benefit the residents of Orange County.  In today’s post 9/11 world we face new challenges and risks never before imagined.  Criminals are not always local; neither are best practices.  We have always prided ourselves on being an organization that aggressively pursues new ideas and technology.

While in France we spent all of our time with officials from Interpol, sharing information and looking for opportunities to develop partnerships for the exchange of information and personnel. Numerous Federal agencies and the New York Police Department have staff temporarily assigned to Interpol and the educational and ultimate task force experience can be invaluable to an organization.   Furthermore, as a result of this trip we have continued to work with our contacts at Interpol to share information on Orange County arrestees.   

In London, our agenda was no less aggressive.  We met with numerous executive representatives from law enforcement to review programs that may have application to our department and benefit to our residents.  We met with Gary Pugh, the Director of Forensic Science Services at New Scotland Yard to discuss the pros and cons of maintaining an in house laboratory as compared to contracting DNA services to outside labs.  Issues of cost and quality control, turnaround times, evidentiary issues and contamination were all discussed.  Forensic Science Division Commander Dean Gialamas visited the FSS contract laboratory, which is some 120 miles away.   As a direct result of this trip we are currently in negotiations to obtain software that should significantly enhance our DNA database capability.   

Travel to other areas is always interesting and informative.  And, although at the time of this trip I had significant family and personal medical issues which needed my attention, I determined that the county and the department would significantly benefit from the information and experience we all would bring back. While on this trip I continued to respond to calls and e-mails from OCSD personnel and, because the travel involved considerable flight time I had plenty of time to work on Department business. I am including such details here because I understand the need for public employees to protect themselves from false allegations related to their activities.

However, what I do not understand is why Supervisor Moorlach couldn’t have called for information before insinuating that those of us who travelled lied to the Board regarding what was clearly a work related and beneficial trip.  To better explain we are providing to you the documents approving the trip, reporting the trip and in response to the questions raised. We invite you to read them and we believe any questions regarding the purpose and benefit of the trip will be answered. Finally, The Orange County District Attorney's office has also visited England for the purpose of evaluating potential benefits to Orange County law enforcement and the residents we serve. Anyone who continues to doubt the validity and importance of such trips may wish to contact the District Attorney's office for further justification.

Here's the Agenda Staff Report requesting approval from the Board of Supervisors for the Sheriff to travel.

Here's the itinerary of our trip.

Here's a letter to the County CEO we sent last week.

Here's an Interpol Press Release on the Sheriff's visit.

Update, November 8th: Here's one Supervisor's understanding of the visit to Europe. This comes from Supervisor Bates' newsletter and was written on March 23rd, after the Board approved the trip for the Sheriff (prior to the trip):

"At Tuesday’s meeting, the Board of Supervisors approved the Sheriff-Coroner to travel to Great Britain and France to meet with law enforcement, private sector and government officials on international terrorism and law enforcement issues. Sheriff Carona will travel to Lyon, France, to meet with Secretary General Ronald Noble of Interpol for a series of classified briefings on intelligence, drug and human trafficking, money laundering and terrorism. Establishing a direct relationship with Interpol will provide the Sheriff with direct access to timely intelligence. The Sheriff will also travel to London to meet with Great Britain’s top metropolitan police agency, Scotland Yard, to be briefed by its commissioners on security operations at London-Heathrow Airport and on the London Underground public transportation system. He will be given a briefing on the Closed Circuit Television system utilized for security in the greater London area. Upon his return, Sheriff Carona will provide the Board of Supervisors with a complete report on findings and public safety goals developed from the comprehensive briefings."
 

And here's Supervisor Bates' take on the trip after the Sheriff and Command Staff returned:

"Orange County Sheriff Mike Carona recently met with Secretary General Ronald K. Noble at the Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, to identify ways in which vital international police information could be accessed by officers on the street.

The world’s largest police organization, each of Interpol’s 186 member countries has an Interpol National Central Bureau (NCB) which is controlled and staffed by the national authorities of that country.

Located in Washington DC, the United States NCB includes police representatives from a number of federal and state law enforcement agencies, and has been working with the General Secretariat to extend Interpol services to officers in the field.

“If Orange County Sheriff’s Deputies were given direct access to Interpol’s tools such as the Stolen and Lost Travel Documents database, this would have a major impact on our ability to carry out our job of protecting all residents and visitors,” said Sheriff Carona.

Since January, 2007, Orange County Sheriff’s Department Jail Deputies have had official designation from the US’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency to interview foreign nationals taken into custody. Enabling access to Interpol’s international databases would further assist local law enforcement to identify international wanted persons arrested in Orange County.

For more information, please click here."

To view photos of Sheriff Carona meeting with Secretary General Ronald K. Noble at Interpol headquarters, please click here.

From the Orange County Register:

Cold case detectives Louie Martinez and Ferrell Buckles reopened the Wariner case in 2006 and found several items collected from the crime scene still available for testing using modern forensic technology, said Santa Ana police spokesman Jose Gonzales.

The evidence was submitted to the Orange County Sheriff's Department crime lab for testing and analysis, and Faith was linked to the scene through fingerprints, police said. He was charged with murder after he was interviewed by the detectives Thursday.

It is the oldest cold case murder investigation resulting in an arrest in Orange County.

Read the full story here.

On today's agenda:

#8. Approve agreement of cooperation with State Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation for secure re-entry facility.

#19. Select DMJM H&N as primary and Joint Venture - MVE and Partners / Rosser International Inc. as alternate firms for Musick Master Plan; authorize negotiation of agreement for Board approval; and make California Environmental Quality Act findings.

#20. Accept grant from U.S. Department of Justice for Forensic DNA Backlog Reduction Program, FY 2007 ($397,427); and authorize Sheriff-Coroner to execute cooperative agreement.

The Sheriff will be attending the meeting and speaking on AB900, legislation signed earlier this year to reform California's prison system. Here's the Governor's press release on SB943, legislation Governor Schwarzenegger signed on September 26, creating the first secure community re-entry facility.

Sheriff Carona will also be discussing the expansion of the James A. Musick jail.

Watch the board hearing live right here.

Kimberly Edds from the Register asks, "Why does it take so long for toxicology results to come back from the crime lab? And what do those really prove any way?"

Director Dean Gialamas helps with the answer: "[T]he folks at the Sheriff's crime lab can figure it out. All it takes is a little blood or tissue and a lot of time – anywhere from a few days to eight weeks. And they move through as many as 20,000 alcohol and drug cases a year – with a staff of 13, said Dean Gialamas, director of the county's Sheriff- Coroner's forensic sciences lab."

See Kimberly's entire report here.

Here's some more information on what our Forensic Science Services Division is doing:

SABRE (Sexual Assault Backlog Reduction Effort) 

The Orange County Sheriff-Coroner Crime Laboratory received a grant under the California Cold Hit Program from the California Governor’s Office of Criminal Justice Planning (OCJP) on July 01, 2000. The grant provided resources to screen, profile and confirm DNA evidence from unsolved, suspectless sexual assault cases and homicides with a sexual component which occurred between October 01, 1994 and October 1, 2003. The project was designated by the department as SABRE – the Sexual Assault Backlog Reduction Effort.  

337 previously unanalyzed cases were submitted to the Sheriff’s Crime Laboratory from all Orange County law enforcement agencies. 228 DNA profiles were obtained from these cases and entered into the DNA database (CODIS). The SABRE team also retrieved and reanalyzed cases that had been previously tested with older technology to generate new DNA profiles compatible with the current CODIS database. In addition, 38 cases from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office were analyzed by the OCSD Crime Laboratory under a contract agreement. 

This resulted in 29 cold hits and 28 case to case hits by the end of the program. OCSD had the state’s 100^th cold hit (a sexual assault case from Fountain Valley PD) and the state’s 2000^th cold hit (a Costa Mesa PD sexual assault case).  

Some project highlights include: 

The first cold hit identified the suspect of a 1980 Seal Beach PD rape and homicide of an elderly woman. This was a national database hit and the suspect was incarcerated in a Florida state prison.  A sexual assault case in Florida was also linked to the suspect. This case has not yet gone to trial because of the mental health of the suspect. 

Case to case links were revealed in 2002 between a Huntington Beach rape of an elderly woman, two Los Alamitos rapes of elderly women, the “Belmont Shores” serial rapes in Los Angeles County and a rape series in Washington State.  The suspect, Mark Rathbun, was later apprehended and tried in a LA County Court for the crimes. 

James SHIPP was a suspected serial rapist arrested by Orange Police Department in 2001 for two sexual assaults on cleaning women. He was also linked by DNA to an unsolved 1997 Santa Ana PD rape case, an unsolved 1995 Fountain Valley PD rape, a Tustin PD attempted sexual assault and an unsolved 1998 Irvine PD homicide.

From Chief Probation Officer Colleene Preciado to Chairman Chris Norby:

"July 26, 2007:

I would like to inform you of an extraordinary collaborative effort by the County’s Law Enforcement Team. As you are aware, the Orange County Fair i currently open. Each Tuesday, the Fair offers free admission for children in the “Kids Day” event. As you are also aware, the Probation Department’s Sex Offender Unit aggressively monitors and keeps close tabs on the whereabouts of known sex offenders. As in previous years, our Sex Offender Until attends the Fair on Kids Day and other days to ensure the public is safe from predators and to seek out sex offenders violating terms of their probation. Sex offenders are specifically forbidden to attend events such as the Fair because it is a location “likely to be attended by children.”  

On Tuesday, July 24, the Department Sex Offender Unit, along with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, was once again successful in spotting a long-time, known child molester at the Orange County Fair. The sex offender is a Megan’s Law registrant that was formerly on probation and is currently on parole. Deputy Probation Officer Andrew Parker, a member of the Sex Offender Unit, recognized the known sex offender, Sheriff’s Deputy Charlie Davis notified state parole, and DPO Parker was authorized to immediately arrest the offender. The public is safer today because this sex offender has been taken into custody and will likely return to prison. To what degree we don’t know, but a crime was certainly avoided on Tuesday because of the astute and professional work of the Probation Department’s officers. A week earlier on July 17, the Probation Department’s Sex Offender Unit was walking the fairgrounds and spotted a known child molester. With the assistance of the Sheriff’s Department, the sex offender was taken into custody thereby removing this predator from the event. To underscore the importance, both sex offenders have been convicted of numerous crimes of child molestation and other sex offenses.  

This is not the first time our Sex Offender Unit has served public safety well at the Orange County Fair. In 2005, the Probation Department made national and international news for catching a sexual predator at the Fair. Again last year, a similar arrest was made at the Fair – another sex offender was apprehended.  

I believe the Orange County Probation Department’s Sex Offender Unit is the finest in the State. […]This collaborative including the Probation Department and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department with officers Charlie Davis and David Caler works very well to keep Orange County safe. The fine teamwork between the Probation and Sheriff’s Departments strengths the enforcement capabilities of the County, thereby resulting in exceptional results, as described in these recent events at the Fair."

Sheriff Carona is presenting a review of our DNA programs to the Board of Supervisors this morning. Here's the presentation. 

The Orange County Crime Lab is nationally recognized as a leader in facilitating the use of DNA technology to solve crime. The Orange County Sheriff's Department was the first law enforcement agency in the Western United States to incorporate DNA using public-private partnerships back in 1989.

Other highlights:

nIn May 2006, became and continues to be the number one DNA hit producing local crime lab in California

• n20% of all DNA hits in California originate from the OCSD crime lab
• In September 2006, OCSD set a new state record of 22 DNA hits on a single day

• nWe are on target to see 1000 DNA hits per year by 2009

Over the last four years, the crime lab has been leading the nation in the application of DNA testing to high volume crimes, such as Residential & Commercial Burglaries and Robberies

• OCSD lab leads the nation in successful DNA recovery from touch / trace DNA samples 
•  60-70% of all DNA hits are from DNA samples recovered from burglaries and robberies

Orange County’s cost per case was the lowest of all participating agencies and more cost-effective than outsourcing

• OC Crime lab cost per case:           $395.57
• Next lowest agency cost:                $620.83
• Agency using outsourcing:              $960.91

Example: A particular investigation requires three DNA samples. Orange County Sheriff's cost would be $395.57 for this case (and for all cases). The District Attorney has a cost of $450.00 per sample; therefore, the cost for this case would be $1,350.

...so why do they do it? Because statistics show that many non-violent criminals will "graduate" to more violent crimes. Identifying these individuals early can prevent violent crimes in the future.

From the San Diego Union Tribune:

A favorite collection spot for DNA comes in the bathroom, where burglars often use the toilet and don't flush.

“Fingerprints, shoe prints and tool marks have long been the bread and butter of burglary crimes – that's what everyone looks for,” said Dean Gialamas, director of forensic sciences for the Orange County Sheriff's Department and a member of the National Institute of Justice working group on DNA forensics.

“We now are extending investigations one more notch to include DNA,” Gialamas said. “This is another piece of forensic science that could answer a lot of questions in lesser crimes.”

Gialamas said there is a cost-benefit component to using DNA to solve crimes such as burglaries.

Does it make sense to spend $2,000 to solve a $400 burglary?

The answer may be yes, Gialamas said, if it results in catching a crook who is responsible for other crimes or stopping a crook from moving to more serious crimes.

Read it all right here.

1999 - Established a Level III Reserve Academy

1999 - Established Intensive Format Basic Recruit Training

1999 – 2004 Theo Lacy expansion

1999 – 2001 Establishment of major Homeland Security measures prior to 9/11

2000 - First county in the state to implement AMBER ALERT – became a statewide model

2000 - Implemented the BEST Choice Program -- Innovative treatment program to reduce recidivism and the number of victims created by substance abuse.

2000 - Implemented Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT)

2002 - Developed a Homeland Security strategy for Orange County and submitted it to the President of the United States for use as a model for the nation

2000- Received 100% compliance rating for disaster preparedness from FEMA

2000 - Successfully coordinated Marshall merger

2001 - First in the nation to provide Driving / Force Options simulators in a combined curriculum

2002 - Appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as an advisor on the Emergency Response Senior Advisory Committee for the Director of the Office of Homeland Security. Reappointed by Secretary Ridge in 2004 and reappointed by Secretary Chertoff in 2005.

2003 to Present - Serves as a Board Member for the NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING AND EXPLOITED CHILDREN

2003 - Opened state-of-the-art Katella Training Facility (Shooting Range)

2003 - Female Youth Drunk Driving Program initiated

2003 - Implemented Orange County’s first Joint Terrorism Task Force

2004 - Opened state-of-the-art Coroner’s Facility

2004 - Served as a commissioner on Governor Schwarzenegger’s California Performance Review’s Public Review Commission and as a member of the Governor’s Transition Team.

2004 to Present – Appointed by former Attorney General Ashcroft to the National Institute of Corrections Advisory Board. Also serves as an advisor on the National Amber Alert Task Force.

2004 to 2005 – Appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California State Athletic Commission. (has since resigned)

2005 - Groundbreaking of new Training Academy

Ongoing - Orange County Explorer Post #449 has quadrupled in size since 1999

Ongoing - 800MHz county-wide communications system

Ongoing - DNA and Forensic Sciences Services leads the nation in use of technology, etc.

Safest Cities – Mission Viejo and Lake Forest (as ranked by Morgan Quinto)