For the past two days, I’ve avoided commenting on Laura Chick’s audit of the LAPD’s rape kit testing back log. After last week’s fingerprint analysis revelations, I didn’t have the heart.
But upon reflection: REALLY GUYS! What the hell is going on here?
Why did it take some very firm public prodding by Human Rights Watch last June, backed up by Laura Chick’s alarming audit released on Monday to get anyone to pay attention?
And why did the LAPD forensics lab compound the backlog by making such poor use of a $4 million federal grant ($1 million, per year) to clear up the backlog that $500,000 of this year’s grant was simply withdrawn?
And where, pray tell, was the police commission, the mayor and the city council in all this? Jack Weiss has been making fuss, but why did Antonio Villaraigosa turn down the department’s funding request to hire more staff for the crime lab?
[PLEASE NOTE UPDATE 2 at the bottom of the post about how the City Council’s Public Safety Committee has been paying attention for a year, it seems. And what have they done in that year? They’ve been “formulating a plan.” Great. We feel so much better. )
The way the rape kit situation works under California law is this: there is no statute of limitations for bringing a rape case if the rape kit is tested within two years. But if it is not tested in that time frame, the statute of limitations is 10 years. As Laura Chick reported, 217 of the 7,000 rape kits backlogged, passed the 10 year mark.
Also, under California law, the LAPD is required to notify victims if their rape kits remain unopened within two years of the crime. But, again, according to Laura Chick’s audit, the LAPD has no procedures in place to notify the required victims, and thus exactly zero notifications have occurred when victims’ kits pass the two year mark.
5,694 of the untested kits are more than two years old. (And, of course, none of those victims were notified. )
How could the department possibly fail to notify any of these nearly 6000 women in order that they could request an extension of the 10-year statute of limitations?
Sure, this is nightmare budget year, but in what universe is it a good money-saving choice put a rape suspect back on the street because of an untested rape kit?
Human Rights Watch, which has been looking into the issue all over the country, had this three point plan for the LAPD:
Making testing of rape kits a priority, by dedicating future federal funds to reducing the backlog. Immediate action should be taken to test kits in cases in which the statute of limitations is soon to expire and those that are nearing the two-year threshold.
Developing a three-year strategic plan to ensure prompt testing of every rape kit collected in the future. The plan should provide sufficient oversight to ensure effective use of grant funds.
Establishing a system to monitor closely rape kit cases approaching the two-year threshold and 10-year statute of limitations, and to ensure that they are promptly tested.
Developing a victim notification system to comply with the law and ensure that rape victims are informed if their kits remain untested after two years.
All of the above is common sense. So why wasn’t it followed?
The LAPD under Bill Bratton and company is doing a lot right, so why did they fumble so terribly with these two issues—the fingerprint analysis and the rape kits?
We need answers, not just promises to do better.
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Early Ofari Hutchinson and Tim Rutten each have columns that take our city officials sharply to task for these messes.
And rightly so.
UPDATE: The LA Times also has a very thoughtful and smart editorial on the rape kit problem. (It’s unsigned, but I think Rob Greene wrote it. Yep. Just got an email back from Rob. It’s his.) The Ed Board too is mighty irritated. Here’s a clip.
Los Angeles remains the nation’s most underpoliced big city, and recent downward crime trends have come in spite of, and not because of, the unacceptably low officer-to-resident ratio. But there’s little point in having more officers, or arrests, if the department neglects the bedrock investigative and lab work necessary to solve crimes.
Uh, yeah.
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UPDATE 2: Councilman Greg Smith says that Laura Chick is a little late to the party, and that the public safety committee has been looking at the issue for a year and has been “formulating a plan. ” Okay, point taken, I guess.
But, while looking into things is nice and all, doing something about the problem would be a bit better.
This is, by the way, exactly what drives us the most nuts about the Council. How much committee analysis and plan formulation does it take to realize that the women whose kits have reached the magic 2-year mark need the courtesy of a phone call or a letter so they don’t statute-of-limitations-out? We understand that testing the kits is labor intensive and requires skill—AKA it’s expensive. But notifications…????
Color us not at all comforted by a year of study and no action.
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PS: Yesterday there was also the whole thing about the ACLU’s newly published report saying that LAPD officers are racial profiling with their traffic and pedestrian stops. (The report is based on accounts of 810,000 pedestrian and motor vehicle stops in the year from July 2003 to June 2004, and it contradicts the LAPD’s own analysis of the stops.)
But we’ll talk about all that another time.
Police Brutality: the fun part of Law Enforcement.
LAPD: More hitters than catchers.
LAPD: We’ll treat you like a King!
Just how many rapes are there each year in L.A.?
racial profiling: Can hardly wait.
Celeste, this gal has a similar post on your topic. Take a look at her “blogroll” list.
Feminist Philosophers
Feministe
Feministing
Finally, a Feminism 101 Blog
Kissmypinapple
The Angry Black Woman
Unapologetically Female
I’d hate to tangle with them.
You need to be on that list, too.
Still, this problem needs to be resolved, both for the victim and the justice system; and, it can be handled rapidly and cheaply if someone takes a lousy couple of days to do it. That’s government for you.
Mr. Woody, meet your court-appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Lecter.
Woody says “You need to be on that list, too.”
Ms. Fremon, order Woody’s brain scan records to be released!
Hiroshi must be Nurse Cratchit.
WOODY/BRAIN.COM file closed. (A)rgue (R)etry (I)nstall Windows (F)orget It.
Please cut the serial personal attacks against Woody (or anybody). It stifles comment. Thanks.
There’s also an article in the Daily News, about how Greig Smith took Chick to task for tarring the whole Council with one broad brush, whereas the Public Safety Committee that he serves on has been beating the drum about this issue for over a year. Holding weekly meetings, formulating the specific plan to hire and train 13 forensic scientists, meanwhile to use outside labs (since LAPD claims it takes 2 years to train a scientist internally). As you say, Weiss has “been making a fuss,” and gave $100,000 from his own funds to process some of the backlog, to call attention to the issue — way before the news of this lost $500,000 missing grant made the papers. (As I recall, it was some sort of Catch-22 problem: the Dept. didn’t want to just squander the money until they had the scientists to do the work, but since they didn’t spend the money that fiscal year the feds assumed the dept. didn’t need any more.)
But the papers had not been taking the issue seriously until they pounced on the dept. losing out on these matching funds. Rutten’s article is right to point out that part of the problem with the Mayor’s actually apparently voting against funding for the issue, because he made the mistake of promising that “every penny” of the trash fee hikes would go toward “hiring more cops,” so the public and media have been claiming he lied, since Chick’s earlier audit showed that much of the money went to other dept. needs. He boxed himself in with that one sentence, whereas those funds should legitimately be going toward the forensic scientists and other essential needs as well.
Now that Chick has just rehashed the problem without even a mention to the Public Safety Committee’s work, Smith seems right that she’s disrespectful and downright inaccurate in her grandstanding about the issue. She’s been accused of this kind of thing before — just rehashing existing info to grab headlines, even if she knowingly and unfairly throws others under the bus.
And the media didn’t listen or make efforts to influence LAPD policy until she released an “impartial audit,” and they could blast LAPD for losing the funds. Hopefully it was just an oversight on her part, as she claims — but that would mean she’s much less informed about what’s been happening than she claims.
The good thing is there’s finally attention to the issue.
Good points, fact checker. I just put a link to the Greg Smith thingy up. On the other hand, WFT was the public safety committe doing in a year? How long does it take to “formulate a plan?”
Just from what I’ve read, seems the PS Committee was holding weekly meetings with someone from LAPD to not just formulate the plan, identify resources and options etc. Sounds like there wasn’t the will inside LAPD to get moving faster. (Cuz they were also focused on hiring cops and numbers.) And they also created a city-wide citizen task force inviting interested parties like people at rape counseling centers, to offer input and data and collectively pressure the media and their colleagues as well as LAPD. It was that pressure which called Chick’s attention to the matter in the first place. But maybe you can get Smith or Weiss to explain themselves.
By the way, looking again at the Daily News piece (written by Rick Orlov) and his column about it in Sausage Factory, seems he’s not exactly presenting Smith’s whole quote when he says that the Committee has been “looking at” the issue for a year. (Per my comment above, they’ve done a lot more and moved Chick to do an audit which rehashes what the Committee already learned — at what cost, I wonder? Did she spend $500,000 on an outside report to berate LAPD and the city for losing out on that amount?)
Orlov is solidly a Valley-ite, conservative suburban, and his stories are generally twisted against anything to do with metro LA, the Council or the Mayor’s office. While I’m no “progressive” leftie, I do resent the bias against the sheer geography of metro LA and especially the westside from conservatives and those on the Eastside. (Orlov’s more of a Ron Kaye holdover as I read him.) In contrast to new editor Carolina Garcia, who has her own very polar opposite slant usually. Orlov even seems to think Smith isn’t Republican enough, a sell-out, and seems to enjoy making him out to be a lot more ineffectual than is the case. Orlov’s faction has been on the bandwagon calling the Mayor a liar for not putting literally every penny of the trash tax towards new hires, and has ignored Weiss and Smith’s pleas to LAPD and Council to fund the scientists. Like Rutten and the rest who only see a story when they’re hit on the head with a catchy scandal.
These are just some of the nuances lost by having their owner/ Chief Editor (whatever his title is), Dean Singleton, outsourcing these sorts of local stories to a writer/ hack in India or China, absurd as that sounds. (Referencing your earlier post.) Reading between the lines of local coverage as well as what council colleagues say about each other is half the fun of following them. Then again, maybe some guy in India would have put in Smith’s whole quote and detailed their efforts instead of infusing it with the writer’s bias.
It’s pretty unusual to have Smith come out so publicly against another City official, but I think it’s justified by her grandstanding and carefully contrived public anguish over the situation, without giving any credit where it’s due.
Nothing in Chick’s report adds anything or tells us what’s really going on inside LAPD on this — blaming everyone isn’t helpful. Did the PS Committee manage in the last year to awaken their awareness, or was it just the debacle of the recent revelations about losing fed funding and the backlog? Doesn’t the LAPD already have the lab? Isn’t there also a similar issue the PS Committee’s been pressing them on involving hiring anti-terror experts, where a shiny new lab and control center exists (the same one?) but lacks staffing?
The LAPD makes Palin’s little town that charged for Rape Tests look like a great deal.
Trying to Identify Rapists from DNA, A Long, Tedious Process, by Rachel Uranga in Daily News today.
A good article that tells us a lot more info than Chick’s “audit” which rehashes what the public safety committee already learned and proposed a plan to remedy. You’re also unfairly bashing them, Celeste, when the problem is that the 16 scientists they identified as needed for the job just were not approved for funding by the Council, because that takes a majority and the rest of them have their pet projects. And often, only when the public and media cry out for something do they prioritize it as a budget item. For now, it’s been limited to hiring cops by the LAPD.
Trying to Identify Rapists from DNA, A Long, Tedious Process, by Rachel Uranga in Daily News today.
A good article that tells us a lot more info than Chick’s “audit” which rehashes what the public safety committee already learned and proposed a plan to remedy. You’re also unfairly bashing them, Celeste, when the problem is that the 16 scientists they identified as needed for the job just were not approved for funding by the Council, because that takes a majority and the rest of them have their pet projects. And often, only when the public and media cry out for something do they prioritize it as a budget item. For now, it’s been limited to hiring cops by the LAPD.
(The first version didn’t go thru so I’m resubmitting with this — apologies if they both turn up.)
I am an “Assault Prevention Specialist”. I cannot believe that the mayor on down in this great city of LA have so calliously acted as if rape was a “bother”. I believe these politicians would act or make decisions against this heinous act differently if there daughter, girlfriend, wife or even mother has been sexually assaulted. Not only will I NOW do what I can but I ask all of you who can volunteer and join me. ONE out of every 6 women have or will be sexually assaulted or suffer a forcible rape within their lives.
[…] and Parks department. As did her audit of the city’s gang reduction program. She also exposed a huge backlog of untested rape kits laying around the Los Angeles Police Department. Because of Chick’s work, the city was forced […]
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