Many large police departments, like LAPD and Houston PD, have been experiencing and continue to experience a huge backlog of rape kits to be tested for DNA. The Houston Police Department has had serious problems with its crime lab since that became known nine years ago when it was revealed that its inept and unqualified lab technicians were employing bad science, storing evidence in highly unacceptable ways and getting way behind in doing the work of the lab.
One major complaint about police agency crime labs is that their testing is not scientifically objective because the technicians slant their tests and courtroom testimony to favor the prosecution. To counter this criticism, the City of Houston and the county have set up an ‘independent’ crime lab in the medical examiner’s office.
I’m not sure how independent that lab will really be since the medical examiner and his staff work closely with the law enforcement agencies for which they are going to conduct the tests. A better way of ensuring a truly independent crime lab would have been to establish a lab whose personnel do not interact with the police in any way other than to receive evidence for testing.
Meanwhile, there is the expectation that Houston’s backlog of 11,000 rape test kits will still be tested. 11,000 test kits? You gotta be kidding if anyone actually believes they will ever be tested. That's a logistical nightmare, and quite frankly, an impossibility. And even if it were possible, the costs for all those tests would have bankrupted the city. And the same goes for Los Angeles and the other cities with this problem.
The only way out of this mess is to burn all but the most recent kits and start over from scratch. The key to DNA testing is not to get behind in the first place.
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