In a report issued on Monday, Human Rights Watch released a 68-page report that detailed the approximately 12,669 untested rape kits scattered through various police agencies across LA County, including approximately 5,100 held by LAPD.
In other words, it’s worse than we originally thought when Laura Chick’s audit brought the problem to light last October.
Through interviews with police officers, rape treatment providers, and rape victims, the Human Rights Watch report documents how, after the initial violence of the rape, women find the rape kit procedure invasive and weirdly humiliating. Yet they subject themselves to the kit because they are told it will help catch their rapist. So when law enforcement fails to to test the kit, says the report, it is one more blow to the a woman who has been assaulted.
The best story on this recent news about the rape kid backlog was done by my pal, KPCC’s Frank Stolz.
Stoltze: But police have waited so long to address the backlog, they’re overwhelmed with DNA evidence. Beck says the LAPD needs more criminalists to conduct the testing, but elected officials have tended to support hiring more police officers instead.
Beck: Hiring cops is sometimes more sexy than hiring criminalists. So you have to realize that we do need more police officers, but we do need more criminalists.
One elected official who could—and should—take the rape kit situation a lot more seriously is Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Sarah Tofte of Human Rights Watch told Frank that the mayor refused to meet with her group.
That needs to change.
Yesterday, City Council Member Jack Weiss announced that he was allocating $25,000 from his discretionary General City Purposes funds to:
…… help the LAPD implement a Sexual Assault Kit Tracking System that includes a Victim Notification System. The system will give victims of sexual assault the ability to contact the LAPD via phone or email to learn whether evidence from their case has been tested. This notification system will help LAPD improve accountability to victims in line with the state Sexual Assault Survivors DNA Bill of Rights.
Kudos to Councilmember Weiss for moving so quickly.
However, the mayor is in a position to push this issue and not just track the problem, but get it solved.
Stoltze: Last year, the mayor promised to back a plan to hire 24 more LAPD criminalists. Activists will learn whether he follows through on that promise when he releases his new budget in a few weeks.
The fact that Antonio has been so quiet on the issue is infuriating. Maybe now that will change. Or maybe not.
Up to you, Mr. Mayor.
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UPDATE: For a great background story on the LA Rape Kit issue read this one by Christine Pelisek of the LA Weekly, published last month. Terrific stuff.
Seems like there should be a way to use some stimulus funds to hire additional criminalists.
Christine Pelisek in the LA Weekly has a good, detailed story on the DNA rape kit issue which makes it clear that the matter isn’t as cut-and-dried as you present it here.
Laura Chick didn’t just “discover” the backlog in October, although she did manage to bury the work that LAPD with Charlie Beck, Jack Weiss and others have been doing for years. That and LATimes articles profile how Jack Weiss had been pushing the issue for years, that Weiss didn’t just step upto the plate quickly as you note here but has been doing so for years as being in the vanguard on the issue — Sarah Tofte said as much in council yesterday — and he’d donated $250,000 from some office fund toward the backlog last year.
What IS a shame is that the public and press didn’t pay serious attention to the matter until Laura Chick stood on the steps of city hall to release her audit. Maybe it’s a case where when one elected official pushes for an issue, the others don’t want him or her to get too much attention or “credit” even where the issue has serious merit, a clash of all those egos. (I thought it was odd that Bill Rosendahl exploded with indignation over this issue toward Chief Beck as though he hadn’t been present in Council when Tofte and other rape victim advocates made their cases, which they have done numerous times over the years at Weiss’s invitation. CM Cardenas was among those to point out that Beck could only do as much as was made possible by funding he got — from Council, and they’re raising money from a private foundation and other sources to staff LAPD’s in-house lab. Right now there just aren’t enough outside labs to do the job in real time.)
I don’t think blaming the Mayor is the right response, since it’s the council as a whole which sets budgeting priorities, and some have wanted to cut back funding for LAPD while demanding more cops on the street and in their districts. Someone in council said yesterday that the mayor has been behind this all along — but we know that he in turn has been pressured by the public to spend all the trash tax increases on cops on the street.
Hopefully now everyone including the public realizes that testing DNA evidence is a vital part of justice for victims and by ID’ing perps and compiling a DNA databank, gets them off the street before they can attack someone else. (Many are serial rapists and commit other crimes, per LAPD.)
Pelisek has a short follow-up piece noting that most of the 68 or so cities in L A County have the same problem, as does the County Sheriff’s dept. Baca similarly made DNA rape kit testing a top priority after the Supervisors were embarrassed to be told of their backlog. Beck noted that small (wealthier) cities like Manhattan Beach and the OC were ahead, but L A the city had already woken up long before the vast majority of them and was intent on leading the way. — So before we jump on our city with the usual mayor-bashing, let’s put things in perspective.
Re: the above, The L A Daily News’ article from 11/18/08 says “Councilman’s office to give cops $250,000 for DNA testing,” referring to Jack Weiss.
I also remember reading an angry reaction from Councilman Greig Smith to Laura Chick’s audit, accusing her of overlooking the steady progress he and Jack Weiss have made on the issue with LAPD and their efforts to garner PR.
In fact I remember hearing Weiss interviewed on this issue going back many years, incl. on KPCC or KCRW with Kitte Felde. What strikes me as odd is the institutional lack of collective memory until a perfect storm of PR hits.
FC,
You’re right. Christine’s piece is very good. I’ll link to it.
For the record, it’s $25,000 that Weiss gave yesterday, not $250,000. I’ve not seen the Daily News article on it, but I’m going from the release from Weiss’s office.
No criticism of Charlie Beck. He’s a very smart, down-to-earth guy who has inherited this problem and has done all he can since he’s been Dep. Chief in charge of Detectives, to solve it. If you read between the lines of his quotes, however, you can see a lot.
Things are always more complex. But the fact that Villaraigosa declined to meet with Tofte, or so she said—unless that has changed in the last 24-ish hours—was vexing.
Admittedly, I’m in a bad mood toward the mayor’s office for entirely unrelated reasons having to do with an unrelated story I’m working on.
Thanks, however, for flagging Christine’s piece. It is by far the most complete when it comes to the whole picture.
Celeste — as I make clear the $250,000 is an earlier amount as referenced in the 11/18/08 Daily News article IN ADDITION TO and preceding the amount of $25,000 donated yesterday.
Also check out Pelisek’s LA Daily blog update from yesterday 3/31, specifically on the Human Rights Watch report as pertains to the dozens of cities in the whole county, which are by and large way behind Los Angeles. (Except for a few smaller, wealthier cities like Manhattan Beach, and the O. C. as noted also by Chief Beck.) Eric Garcetti offered to make City Hall available for a county-wide forum/ meeting place to exchange ideas and brainstorm joint solutions on the issue, another good idea.
Ah, my bad. Missed that you said it was a November DN article. The perils of multitasking.
And, yes, I know it’s various city’s throughout the County, hence my opening sentence: “…12,669 untested rape kits scattered through various police agencies across LA County, including approximately 5,100 held by LAPD…”
Thanks for the Garcetti note. Good on him. I have grown quite fond of the dude.
Good. But it’s not just a matter of relative numbers, since LA’s by far the largest city, but relative commitment, that I thought was missed by your premise. Just want to give credit where due once in a while… As a matter of (un)fairness it seems that LAPD and the city of L A get way more than their fair share of scrutiny (and often false blame, e.g., with the Jamiel’s Law/ illegal gangmembers/ S040 issue) than the County, whether it’s the Sheriff’s dept. or the Supervisors.
Hence it was almost surprising to finally see an LA Times story about how the Supervisors have an employee tape labels over water bottles with their individual names on them, lest they give free promo to some water company. AS IF anyone really cares what the Supervisors drink — seems more a symbol of their self-importance than anything else.
Meanwhile, Laura Chick spent who knows how much on an audit blasting the LAPD for spending some $17-18,000/ year on bottled water for ALL of LAPD. An amount LAPD says is actually for 1 1/2 years. No wonder Bratton gets cranky!