{"id":362877,"date":"2026-06-16T15:23:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T15:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/362877\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T15:23:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T15:23:53","slug":"oc-district-attorney-suspends-controversial-dna-harvesting-program-amid-budget-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/362877\/","title":{"rendered":"OC District Attorney Suspends Controversial DNA Harvesting Program Amid Budget Cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer quietly sunset a controversial DNA collection program last month amid budget cuts at the county government after years of questioning in courts over whether it was constitutional or not.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The program \u2013 colloquially known as \u201cSpit and Acquit\u201d \u2013 was started by Spitzer\u2019s predecessor Tony Rackauckus in 2007.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It offered people charged with a misdemeanor a choice \u2013 face charges, or pay a fee to take a DNA swab and put it into the county\u2019s database.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While Spitzer questioned the <a href=\"https:\/\/voiceofoc.org\/2015\/04\/da-and-supervisors-chairman-clash-over-dna-lab-oversight\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">program while he was a county supervisor<\/a>, he reversed course shortly after his 2018 election win and has been a supporter of the program ever since, receiving at least $4.2 million in the last five years from county supervisors to help manage it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The database contained nearly 215,000 people\u2019s DNA as of Jan. 2025 according to a county staff report, and at the time prosecutors also confirmed the database was used at least successfully over 12,000 times to generate \u201chits or leads\u201d that were shared with police departments across the county.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But in an email to the district attorney\u2019s staff on the evening of May 21, Amanda Maldonado, an Executive Management Assistant at the DA\u2019s office, sent out an email titled \u201cTemporary Suspension of the DNA Collections Program.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt is with deep regret that we share that, due to a mandatory budget reduction from the County, the program will be temporarily suspended for the upcoming year,\u201d reads the email, which is signed \u201con behalf of executive management.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">County lawyers are also in the midst of settling a lawsuit questioning whether the program is constitutional, but would not comment on if the program\u2019s closure was part of the settlement negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/voiceofoc.org\/2023\/04\/lawsuit-against-district-attorneys-dna-program-revived-raising-constitutional-concerns\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lawsuit Against District Attorney\u2019s DNA Program Revived, Raising Constitutional Concerns<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Kimberly Edds, a spokesperson for the DA\u2019s office, declined to comment aside from confirming the closure was not in response to the settlement negotiations.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The database alone cost the county nearly $1 million in storage over the last fiscal year, a contract that is set to wrap up at the end of June.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Maldonado also noted in an email to staff the program was only suspended for the next year, leaving it an open question on whether the county could resume testing in the future.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org. <\/p>\n<p>\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer quietly sunset a controversial DNA collection program last month amid budget cuts&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164,6703,29215,2034,2267],"class_list":["post-362877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news","tag-county-government","tag-dna","tag-todd-spitzer","tag-voice-of-oc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362877\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}