L.A.‘s rape kit betrayal

LAPD has left rape kits sit with­out ana­lyz­ing them for over 10 years, beyond the statue of lim­i­ta­tions. If the back­log is so great that the crime lab can’t process the vol­ume of evi­dence they get in, they need to either hire more peo­ple, work more effi­ciently (shifts), or send evi­dence out to pri­vate labs for analysis.

Original arti­cle posted here.

Tim Rutten:

L.A.‘s rape kit betrayal

The mayor, police chief and City Council major­ity are equally to blame for the 7,000 untested rape kits.
Tim Rutten

October 22, 2008

» Discuss Article We now know that the Los Angeles Police Department’s crime lab is a vir­tu­ally per­fect engine of injustice.

As The Times reported last week, an inter­nal report on the fin­ger­print unit turned up at least two instances in which shoddy work led to the pros­e­cu­tion of inno­cent peo­ple. Then, on Monday, City Controller Laura Chick released an audit The Times reported last week, show­ing that the lab’s under­staffed and under­funded DNA unit has allowed at least 7,000 sex­ual assault test kits to go unopened. In at least 217 of those cases — nobody is sure of the pre­cise num­ber — the kits have been left to sit for so long that the 10-year statute of lim­i­ta­tions has expired, so those assailants can­not be prosecuted.

So, to put the mat­ter plainly: This city has a foren­sic sci­ence divi­sion whose incom­pe­tence ensnares the inno­cent, while its mis­man­age­ment allows the guilty to go free.

Given what we know about the con­duct of sex­ual preda­tors, it seems rea­son­able to assume that this sit­u­a­tion lets crim­i­nals stay on the street to com­mit other assaults. Gail Abarbanel directs the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica UCLA Medical Center, which con­ducts the exam­i­na­tions that go into the assault kits. “Every unopened rape kit means there may be a dan­ger­ous offender loose on the street,” she said Tuesday. “Three new vic­tims came in here yes­ter­day, and you have to won­der whether any of them would have been raped if all those kits had been opened.”

So, hav­ing made a rea­son­able sum­mary of the evi­dence and heard a rea­son­able appraisal of its sig­nif­i­cance, let’s ask the rea­son­able ques­tion: Who’s responsible?

The answer is that the mayor, police chief and City Council major­ity are equally complicit.

Let’s start at the top. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was silent last week on the fin­ger­print issue, and so far he has had noth­ing to say on the abom­inable back­log in the DNA unit. When Villaraigosa runs for reelec­tion next year, he’ll be sure to tout how he col­lab­o­rated with Police Chief Bill Bratton to improve pub­lic safety. If Bratton had gone before the micro­phones Monday to announce that the LAPD had cleared every rape kit in its back­log, the mayor would have been beside him to share the applause. The 7,000 women and chil­dren — half the vic­tims of sex­ual assault are under 18 — at least have the right to expect the mayor to show up when the news is not good.

Bratton, for his part, inher­ited a trou­bled and demor­al­ized depart­ment when he came to Los Angeles six years ago. A great deal has changed since then, and today’s LAPD is more respon­sive, respon­si­ble and effec­tive. But even a $2-billion bud­get like the LAPD’s requires a dec­la­ra­tion of pri­or­i­ties, and it’s obvi­ous that clear­ing the rape kit back­log hasn’t been the chief’s.

It’s true, as Bratton points out, that the LAPD repeat­edly has requested more money for its crime lab. But the best avail­able data sug­gest that there were about 2,600 untested rape kits in the LAPD’s hands when he took over as chief. If there are 7,000 now, every year of Bratton’s tenure more than 700 vic­tims of sex­ual assault had cru­cial evi­dence of the crime against them go unex­am­ined. That’s a demerit on a gen­er­ally admirable record that can’t just be erased by cre­at­ing a spe­cial task force — which was Bratton’s reac­tion Monday. The chief needs to declare a rea­son­able date to clear the back­log and apply some of his famous account­abil­ity to those charged with meet­ing it.

Finally, there’s the coun­cil major­ity, whose per­for­mance on this issue has been feck­less, as it has been on so many oth­ers. Jack Weiss and Wendy Greuel have waged a lonely bat­tle for action on this scan­dalous foul-up with lit­tle sup­port and less follow-through from their col­leagues. It’s up to Villaraigosa and Bratton to make crime lab staffing and tech­nol­ogy as high a pri­or­ity as increas­ing the num­ber of cops, but the coun­cil needs to push them too — and approve the fund­ing requests.

These are not sim­ply issues of jus­tice but of basic decency. Our social con­tract con­tains an implicit pledge that we will do what we can to keep one another safe and, when that’s impos­si­ble, to do what we must to make the injured whole. Civic Los Angeles — that is, all of us act­ing together — have failed to hold up our end of the bar­gain with the 7,000 women and chil­dren whose inti­mate evi­dence sits neglected in the LAPD’s crime lab.

As Abarbanel said Tuesday: “When a rape is com­mit­ted, the victim’s body is the crime scene. They con­sent to its search in the same way that a per­son who has suf­fered a prop­erty crime con­sents to a search of their home, though it’s them­selves these vic­tims are open­ing to inspec­tion.” To treat evi­dence gath­ered at that excru­ci­at­ing moment in this indif­fer­ent fash­ion, she said, “betrays the victim’s faith in the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”