More support could be coming: <\/strong>The county expects to get a share of $100 million in state dollars being doled out to counties to support new behavioral health, public defender and court costs. County supervisors last week also unanimously backed a plan to ask the state to deploy more funding for increased law enforcement, criminal justice and behavioral health costs tied to Proposition 36.<\/p>\n Read the full story here.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n 20 Years of Impact: How a Voice Rape Kit Story Brought Reform to SDPD<\/strong><\/p>\n For years, San Diego police put rape kits on a shelf and ignored them. The department\u2019s philosophy: Only check the kits if an investigation warranted follow-up.<\/p>\n A nationwide movement to \u201ctest all kits\u201d forced SDPD to change course. But, as former Voice of San Diego reporter Andrew Keatts discovered in 2019, the department was barely checking its backlog of kits<\/a>, skimping on testing to get through the kits as fast as possible.<\/p>\n Standard practice followed by most departments was to test all DNA swabs collected in a kit. SDPD supervisors told analysts to test just one swab per kit, \u201cso they could check a box,\u201d Keatts wrote. The department was leaving hundreds of leads literally sitting on a shelf.<\/p>\n Reaction to Keatts\u2019 story was swift and severe. District Attorney Summer Stephan blasted the department for lowering its standards. SDPD\u2019s lab manager left the department and the police chief ordered analysts to test all DNA swabs. The chief even sent the entire backlog of kits to a third-party lab for further verification.<\/p>\n Keatts later discovered that, of 396 kits tested, 128 returned DNA matches<\/a> that met the criteria to be added to law enforcement databases. Without Voice\u2019s reporting, those DNA samples would still be sitting on a SDPD shelf.<\/p>\n Read the full story here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Related: The U-T reported victims can now track<\/a> their kits. <\/p>\n Aguirre Planning Countywide Tenant Protection Ordinance<\/strong><\/p>\n San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said this week she plans to introduce a countywide tenant protection ordinance early next year that would make it harder for landlords to evict tenants and possibly would regulate how landlords raise rents.<\/p>\n Aguirre, who represents South San Diego County on the County Board of Supervisors, said her staff is researching the issue and could have a proposal ready for the Board as early as January or February.<\/p>\n \u201cWe hope it would complement what Chula Vista and Imperial Beach did,\u201d Aguirre said, referring to tenant protection ordinances adopted in recent years by the two South County cities. Aguirre also cited the city of San Diego\u2019s two-year-old tenant protection ordinance.<\/p>\n Aguirre described her proposed ordinance, which would cover unincorporated areas of the county, as one of several efforts by Board Democrats to lower costs for San Diegans.<\/p>\n Aguirre recently co-sponsored a measure that would regulate so-called \u201cjunk fees\u201d levied by landlords and joined other supervisors in voting to send a letter to state lawmakers voicing support for efforts to increase transparency in utility billing.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m aware of the needs because my district has the highest needs,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In Other News\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n The Morning Report was written by Lisa Halverstadt and Jim Hinch. It was edited by Andrea Lopez-Villafa\u00f1a.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"County officials last year projected at least a $58 million annual budget hit if statewide criminal justice reform…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":373658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,1582,276,9081,3549,7264,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-373659","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-morning-report","12":"tag-san-diego","13":"tag-sandiego","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373659\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/vito-distefano-7-22-25-11-1024x684.jpg\")
Newly-elected San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre at Waterfront Park on July 22, 2025. \/ Vito di Stefano for Voice of San Diego<\/p>\n\n