L.A. announces plan to reduce backlog of unexamined DNA evidence from violent crimes

The City of LA responds to the charges of not effec­tively pro­cess­ing DNA samples.

Original post here.

City offi­cials acknowl­edge that the fund­ing of the $700,000 effort is uncer­tain. The pro­posal is sched­uled for a City Council vote Wednesday.

By Joel Rubin and Richard Winton

October 29, 2008

Top city offi­cials Tuesday unveiled a plan to help the Los Angeles Police Department’s crime lab reduce its mas­sive back­log of unex­am­ined DNA evi­dence from vio­lent crimes, but they acknowl­edged that the fund­ing for the pro­posal was less than certain.

Under the terms of the plan, which the City Council is expected to vote on today, the LAPD would allo­cate $700,000 to hire 16 more DNA ana­lysts and sup­port staff — a boost of about 33% over cur­rent staffing. The city would also increase by $250,000 the funds ear­marked to pay pri­vate lab­o­ra­to­ries that the LAPD hires to help with the daunt­ing workload.

“Our fun­da­men­tal duty as elected offi­cials is to ensure the safety and well-being of each of our res­i­dents,” Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said at a late after­noon news con­fer­ence attended by Police Chief William J. Bratton and City Council mem­bers. “When crimes are com­mit­ted, par­tic­u­larly the heinous crimes of rape — we have a solemn oblig­a­tion to seek justice.”

Despite the rhetoric, how­ever, the pro­posal is not a panacea and does not guar­an­tee that the LAPD will have the funds it needs to process the entire back­log of roughly 7,000 cases, author­i­ties acknowl­edged. Even if approved, the plan would still fall about $900,000 short of what is needed to keep pace with new crimes and meet the LAPD’s goal of clear­ing about 2,500 of the older cases this year. Also, at least $4.2 mil­lion in addi­tional funds would be needed in com­ing years to fill 20 more ana­lyst posi­tions and con­tinue the con­tracts with out­side labs. LAPD and city offi­cials expressed hope that the short­fall could be made up from pri­vate dona­tions and increased fed­eral funding.

“I hope the polit­i­cal com­mit­ment being made here today con­tin­ues in the next sev­eral years,” Bratton said. Then, refer­ring to Councilman Jack Weiss, he added: “As Mr. Weiss has also pointed out, this is not a one-time fix.” Weiss has long fought for increased fund­ing for DNA analy­sis and spear­headed the city’s cur­rent proposal.

The hastily arranged news con­fer­ence was the cul­mi­na­tion of sev­eral months of mount­ing con­cern for the mayor, Bratton and top advi­sors as the LAPD came under increas­ing crit­i­cism for its efforts to reduce the back­log. In August, The Times reported that book­keep­ing mis­takes had resulted in the LAPD los­ing nearly $500,000 in fed­eral grant money ear­marked for DNA analy­sis. And, last week, City Controller Laura Chick released an audit of the DNA lab, which found that 200 poten­tial sex crime cases have not been pros­e­cuted because Los Angeles police offi­cials failed to meet legal dead­lines to test DNA evidence.

Rapes, homi­cides and other vio­lent crimes have fallen dra­mat­i­cally in the six years since Bratton took over the depart­ment. With too few DNA ana­lysts on staff and too lit­tle fund­ing for out­sourc­ing, how­ever, depart­ment offi­cials have said they were help­less to elim­i­nate the backlog.

In a tight bud­get, the fund­ing for the DNA ana­lysts would come at a cost for the LAPD: It would forgo fill­ing some other civil­ian posi­tions this year. The addi­tional out­sourc­ing funds were expected to come from a pool of health­care money turned over to the city by a coali­tion of unions as part of a cost-saving agree­ment reached ear­lier in the year.

At its best, DNA analy­sis pro­vides detec­tives inves­ti­gat­ing vio­lent or prop­erty crimes with nearly air­tight evi­dence to link a sus­pect to a crime. The DNA con­tained in semen col­lected after a rape, for exam­ple, can be exam­ined through an elab­o­rate process to pro­duce a genetic pro­file of the rapist.

The most press­ing cases for the LAPD are the roughly 520 cases of sex­ual assault, homi­cide and other crimes in which detec­tives have requested DNA analy­sis to help in their inves­ti­ga­tion, but have had to wait because of the lab’s lim­ited resources. The remain­der of the back­log — evi­dence from about 6,600 alleged sex crimes — is from cases in which the detec­tives have not yet requested DNA analy­sis. It is unknown how many of those cases have already been resolved and how many might ben­e­fit from an exam­i­na­tion of the genetic evi­dence. Regardless, LAPD offi­cials, like offi­cials in other law enforce­ment agen­cies fac­ing sim­i­lar prob­lems, have said they want to ana­lyze the DNA evi­dence from all the cases.

Sarah Tofte, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, which has drawn atten­tion to DNA back­log issues in law enforce­ment agen­cies around the coun­try, raised con­cerns about whether the LAPD had “a com­pre­hen­sive plan” in place that was needed to take advan­tage of the increased fund­ing. Tofte said the LAPD would have to make a com­mit­ment sim­i­lar to the one made by the New York Police Department, which assigned extra detec­tives to work on noth­ing but back­logged cases.

“Getting rid of the back­log won’t mean any­thing to rape vic­tims unless it trans­lates into more inves­ti­ga­tions of rape cases, and more arrests, pros­e­cu­tions and con­vic­tions,” she said. “This is like some­one try­ing to build a house with­out any blueprints.”