CA- Los Angeles Stops DNA Testing On Sex Cases

6-23-2009 California:

All L.A. DNA testing has been suspended by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department on rape and sexual assault cases.

The Los Angeles Times reports that L.A. DNA testing on thousands of rape and other sex-related crimes has been halted by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department as there is no more money to continue DNA testing in L.A. County.

According to a report submitted to the county's Board of Supervisors by Sheriff Lee Baca, funding for L.A. DNA testing ran dry at the end of May halting thousand of shipments of genetic evidence to private laboratories.

Sheriff's Department officials say they expect to receive federal grant money next month that would allow them to resume L.A. DNA testing. They further anticipate more money in fall that could keep testing going for another 4 to 5 months. However, beyond that, officials are uncertain as to where the money will come from to continue DNA testing in Los Angeles.

This is just another big hit for an L.A. DNA testing program that has come under great scrutiny of late. Towards the end of last year, it was determined that there were some 4,600 untested DNA evidence kits dating back almost 10 years in the Sheriff's Department.

In November, Sheriff Baca promised to clear the decades-old backlog of evidence, as well as, keep pace with testing evidence from all new cases. Unfortunately, Sheriff Baca has been unable to make good on this promise. To make matters worse, the lack of funds has caused the back-log of L.A. DNA testing to grow as the department cannot keep pace with some 330 new sexual assault cases that need testing.

According to the report, evidence from some 676 cases has been sent to outside labs for testing. About three-quarters of those have not yet been processed, department officials said. Usable results have been produced in 98 cases tested so far. However, in only six cases has the genetic profiles of the suspected attackers been compared with state databases. The rest are awaiting a final review by the Sheriff Department's in-house laboratory. Of the six cases, one has identified the alleged attacker, raising the likelihood that the answers to several other rapes and sex crimes lie in the department's untested evidence.

According to Gail Abarbanel, director of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, "[t]he lab must be given the resources it needs to do this work." "There are rapists walking the streets of Los Angeles, who, if they tested evidence that is sitting on shelves, could be taken off."

Just last month, Sheriff Baca told county officials that his department needed about $4.5 million to continue L.A. DNA testing and to outsource old sexual assault kits to private labs and a similar amount to add 30 more people to the Sheriff's Department lab. With those resources, the L.A. DNA backlog could be cleared in 18 months, according to Cmdr. Earl Shields of the department's Technical Services Division. However, county officials made it clear that there was just no money to be had given that they were facing nearly $500 million in budget cuts. ..Source.. by Gabriel Dorman