Governor Brown explained his decision to veto the bill:

“I don’t see why we would mandate counties to participate in a program they don’t want, especially when the state is cutting back on so many programs that are needed and wanted. Local officials are in the best position to determine whether to participate in such a program.”

Due to budgetary constraints, the scope of the bill had narrowed considerably since its introduction by Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena. Initially, AB 322 required jurisdictions to track and test all rape kits, but the version Governor Brown ultimately reviewed required only the ten counties with the lowest sexual assault arrest rates to eliminate their backlogs.

An extremely difficult fiscal climate in California’s government has narrowed the scope of the bill significantly since it was first introduced in the Assembly. Originally, and much like the laws recently passed in Texas (2011) and Illinois (2010), the bill would have required all jurisdictions to report on the number of untested rape kits in their storage facilities on an annual basis and to test all kits in a timely manner if sufficient resources are available. The bill now limits the counting and processing of rape kits to a pilot program in the ten counties with the lowest arrest rates for sexual assault.

The bill comes after several years of news about the backlogs in numerous jurisdictions in California, including Los Angeles City and County, which once had a backlog numbered at over 12,500 untested kits. To catch up on the progress of the state of the backlog in California, be sure to read past articles on the Backlog Blog here.

We posted about the bill, AB 322, that was introduced in the California legislature in February, which seeks to process rape kits in California in a more timely manner. Since it has been introduced in the Assembly,  AB 322, has gone through several significant changes. While the legislation would still call on all jurisdictions to report the number of kits in custody that are not tested, instead of mandating state-wide testing of every kit, it would require some jurisdictions–those with very low rates for solving sexual assault cases–to test all kits in a state-mandated two-and-a-half year pilot program.

In the ten counties which would be part of the pilot program, fewer than 12 percent of rape cases are solved, Monrovia Patch reported in July. AB 322 would require law enforcement to test every rape kit they receive in an effort to improve these rates.

Assemblyman Anthony Portantino, D-Pasadena, has been pushing AB 322 through the legislature.

Portantino has introduced several bills aimed at reforming rape kit testing throughout the state of California in the past, first in response to the discovery of more than 12,000 untested rape kits in Los Angeles discovered in 2009. Despite approval within the legislature, these bills were vetoed by the former governor due to insufficient time and resources on the part of law enforcement. Portantino and advocates for rape kit testing believe that this reason is not good enough.

From a press release issued by Portantino’s office this summer:

“It’s unconscionable that thousands of rape kits remain unopened and untested across California. Rape kits hold vital evidence that is crucial to a criminal conviction, while the clock is ticking on the statute of limitation for these crimes. It’s frustrating to know that a rapist could be walking free and a victim who suffered is further disrespected because a vital piece of evidence went untested.”

Read more about the bill in the Pasadena Star News:

The state of the SMPD’s backlog of untested rape kits came to light in a 2009 report by Human Rights Watch entitled “Testing Justice: The Rape Kit Backlog in Los Angeles City and County.” The report focused on the backlog in police and crime lab storage facilities in Los Angeles City, Los Angeles County, and the 47 cities within the county, of which Santa Monica is one. It found that there were as many as 485 untested rape kits that had been collected since 1996 in the Santa Monica Police Department’s storage facility were not tested.

“We are pleased to say that we zeroed in, made sure all kits were sent out and now we are clear of any backlog,” SMPD Captain Wendy Shirley said.

Prior to 2009, the SMPD did not send every rape kit to the crime lab for testing. The new policy of the department is to send every kit booked into evidence to the crime lab within 72 of collection. The LA County crime lab has been struggling with a large backlog of its own, but as of April 1st, only 82 kits remained untested of the 4,763 rape kits that had been part of the backlog in its storage facility.

Many rape kits yield new profiles of offenders that can be uploaded into CODIS, the national DNA database, and some link to profiles already in the database. For example, evidence found in one of the kits that was part of Santa Monica’s backlog connected a suspect to a series of rapes in Los Angeles; the offender was sentenced to 149 years-to life in prison.

Gail Abarbanel, director of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, told the Daily Press that while this news in encouraging, progress must continue to get all kits tested sooner and make convictions happen faster in the future.

“All of this progress is great, but we need to get to a place where kits are done in a timely way and we’ll save a lot of people from being hurt,” Abarbanel said.

The bill, AB 322…would mandate that rape kits used for DNA testing be sent by law enforcement agencies to a lab within 30 days, and be processed within six months. Agencies would also have to send regular reports on the number of unprocessed rape kits to the [California] Department of Justice that would be also be available to the public.

Portantino, a strong advocate of rape kit reform, has introduced similar legislation in the past, which passed in the legislature both times, but was vetoed by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger who cited a lack of available time and money on the part of law enforcement. From the press release issued by Portantino’s office:

“It’s unconscionable that thousands of rape kits remain unopened and untested across California,” stated Portantino. “Rape kits hold vital evidence that is crucial to a criminal conviction, while the clock is ticking on the statute of limitation for these crimes. It’s frustrating to know that a rapist could be walking free and a victim who suffered is further disrespected because a vital piece of evidence went untested.”

In 2008, the last year for which data are available, there were almost 9,000 reported forcible rapes in the State of California, according to the State of California Criminal Justice Statistics Center. Rape kit backlogs continue to plague labs and departments in the state: the Los Angeles Police Department is dealing with a new backlog of kits they’ve been collecting since 2008, despite clearing its backlog of pre-2008 untested kits. The LA Sheriff is hoping to test all of the 5,000 backlogged rape kits under its jurisdiction by June. And according to the CBS report “Rape in America: Justice Denied,” San Diego and Oakland do not track their untested kits; Oakland found almost 500 kits they said should have been tested back in a 2009 count. San Francisco recently passed an ordinance calling for similar actions of Portantino’s state-wide bill: the timely testing and tracking of rape kits.

We will continue to watch the progress of this bill in the California legislature and keep you posted on it here. You can read more on California’s backlog here.

For the past three years, advocates in Los Angeles and nationally have worked together to end the LAPD’s rape kit backlog, and the news this week that the historic backlog has been tested is an accomplishment that sets up Los Angeles to be considered a model for the rest of the country.

Joyful Heart is pleased to have played a part in this reform along with a number of local and national organizations including Peace Over Violence, the UCLA-Santa Monica Rape Treatment Center and Human Rights Watch. Last year, we placed calls and wrote letters to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and then-Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton to encourage them to find the resources necessary to outsource all of the testing of the historic backlog, increase crime lab staff, and better track rape kit testing results. When Law & Order: SVU featured the rape kit backlog in the third episode of its twelfth season, “Behave,” our screening event in Los Angeles was attended by key members of the LAPD and city leadership, and our audience asked them tough questions about the backlog progress. Additionally, we serve on the Los Angeles Police Department Task Force, a multi-disciplinary group dedicated to oversight of the LAPD’s rape kit backlog progress.

For all the good news this week, there is still work to be done in Los Angeles. For the LAPD, the historic backlog represents those kits identified and counted as untested during a 2008 audit. Any kits collected by the LAPD after the 2008 audit and which have not been tested are considered part of the “new” backlog, which consisted of about 775 untested kits at the last count. In addition to the new backlog, the LAPD is still struggling with what some term the “secondary” backlog—a backlog of profiles that were obtained from rape kits outsourced to private crime labs and that are waiting for a technical review by the LAPD crime lab staff before they can be uploaded into CODIS, the national database of DNA profiles. There are currently about 500 profiles waiting in this secondary backlog.

We had an opportunity during a February event in Los Angeles to speak directly to Mayor Villaraigosa to thank him for his leadership and press him to build on the LAPD’s progress by hiring even more crime lab personnel, ensuring the LAPD have the investigative personnel necessary to follow-up on every lead generated by rape kit testing and implementing a comprehensive, holistic victim notification system. The Mayor heard us, and has promised to do what is necessary during his term to make sure that rape kit testing leads to justice.

We are very proud to be part of the movement to end the rape kit backlog in Los Angeles and across the country and we hope you will continue to stand with us to bring healing and justice to survivors. You can take action by becoming a rape kit reform advocate on endthebacklog.org, and by calling the Mayor and LADP to thank them, and to let them know that their continued efforts to test every kit, to notify every victim of the status of their kits and to deliver justice are important to you.

• Mayor’s Office: 213.978.0600 or 213.978.0721
• LAPD: 213.486.0150.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

The Los Angeles Police Department has cleared a decades-old backlog of untested DNA evidence collected in rapes and other sexual assaults and made hundreds of arrests because of the testing, the department reported Tuesday.

The accomplishment was tempered somewhat, however, by continued staffing shortages in the department’s laboratory that remains too small to keep pace with new cases.

You can read the full article here.

According to an Los Angeles Times, local law enforcement has announced that “it has made considerable progress analyzing DNA evidence from thousands of rapes and sexual assaults that had been left untested.” The article continues:

In late 2008, Beck’s predecessor, William Bratton, under pressure from victim advocate groups, tasked Beck with getting a handle on the thousands of pieces of evidence that had languished untouched in police storage freezers for years.

Ultimately, the department counted 6,132 untested rape kits, which contain samples of semen, blood, hair or other DNA material collected from victims’ bodies and crime scenes. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department announced it, too, had thousands of untested kits.

Both agencies committed themselves to clearing the backlogs and to test all viable rape kits going forward. The LAPD cobbled together funds from federal grants, public coffers and private donors to launch an aggressive push to outsource the evidence kits to private labs for testing.

At the same time, it pressed elected officials for special permission to hire more analysts for its own understaffed laboratory despite a citywide hiring freeze.

During the ceremony for Chief Beck, Los Angeles Mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, cited a dramatic decrease in the number of untested kits, stating that only 35 that contained enough viable DNA were still waiting to be sent for testing at private labs. The Times article goes on to explain that while much progress has been made, the Mayor’s figure doesn’t paint a complete picture of the state of the backlog:

Once a DNA sample has been analyzed by a private lab, federal guidelines require it to be returned to the local law enforcement agency that sent it out for testing.

It is the responsibility of the agency to review the work and upload the extracted DNA profile to federal databases for comparison to millions of profiles collected from people convicted of or arrested for felonies.

The LAPD’s laboratory has struggled to keep pace with this process. According to department figures, 938 DNA profiles–20% of the total number sent to an outside lab for testing–had been returned to the LAPD but were waiting to be uploaded to the databases.

The LAPD also has been unable to keep up with testing needed in new rape cases. Since December 2008, when the department began testing on its backlogged cases, 2,515 new rape kits have been submitted.

Of those, 972 remain untested and an additional 325 sit ready for upload to federal databases. At some point in coming months, when newly hired analysts complete their training, the LAPD lab will be able to handle the influx of new cases, Beck has said.

“We will never have a backlog again,” he said in his comments Friday.

To read more about efforts in Los Angeles, read our interview with Chief Beck from earlier this year and view Friday’s news report from ABC 7 below.

Yesterday, I came across an article in the San Francisco Examiner that discussed new legislation aimed to resolve the city’s backlog. Here’s one highlight from that article:

The Police Department would be required as part of its annual budget submission to report if it is meeting the goal of picking up rape kits within 72 hours of the reported incident, testing evidence within 14 days and testing other DNA evidence from the crime scene within a certain time frame, under proposed legislation.

I also found this quote from a local law enforcement official to be very heartening:

“Rape kits are the most valuable piece of evidence often in these cases. We support this 72-hour collection,” said Assistant Chief Denise Schmitt, who oversees the crime lab. She said the department has begun to meet that goal already.

Read the full article from the San Francisco Examiner.

And check back here on the Backlog Blog in the weeks ahead for updates on the State of the Backlog: San Francisco and an interview with local officials.