V. Untested Rape Kits in Crime Laboratories

We can only do so much with the resources we have.

-Greg Matheson, Los Angeles Police Department Criminalistics Lab director, City of Los Angeles crime laboratory[24]

Even in the few cases of mine where the rape kit is tested, I have to prepare my clients to not expect testing results for many months.

-Rape treatment advocate in Los Angeles County[25]

DNA testing can be a powerful investigative tool in rape cases, given its capacity to connect individuals to rape evidence. Testing rape kit evidence can provide law enforcement with a DNA profile to identify an assailant, confirm the suspect's contact with a victim, corroborate the victim's account of the crime, exonerate innocent suspects, and tie crime scene evidence together. The failure to test rape kits can delay and prevent justice in rape cases. In California, timely rape kit testing is especially crucial to realizing justice for rape victims, as California law removes the 10-year statute of limitations for rape cases in which rape kits are tested within two years of the crime and a DNA profile is obtained from the rape kit's evidence.[26]

The rape kit backlog in Los Angeles County comprises two distinct but related elements. The first part of the backlog exists in police evidence storage facilities, involving rape kits booked into evidence but where testing of the kit is not requested by a detective. The second part of the backlog exists in police crime lab facilities where rape kits are submitted for testing, but are awaiting DNA analysis and are not tested in a timely manner. While both the Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department have recently announced (in August and November 2008, respectively) that they have revised their policies to eliminate detective discretion and to require that every booked rape kit be submitted to the crime laboratory for testing, it is still important to examine the dynamics of the rape kit backlog both before and after these new policies were put in place, especially given the transitional status of the policies, which have not been fully implemented due to current Police and Sheriff's Departments resource capacities.

As will be discussed in Chapter VI, the majority of untested rape kits in Los Angeles County reside in police evidence storage facilities. But a number of untested rape kits are located at the Police Department and Sheriff's Department crime laboratories, where testing delays hold up investigations and prosecutions.

Through its research, Human Rights Watch has found that:

·the Los Angeles County and City crime labs do not have the capacity to quickly test rape kits submitted for testing by detectives;

·the labs do not have the capacity or the personnel to test every booked rape kit, as will be required if the Police and the Sheriff's Departments implement new policies; and

·rape kit testing, from the time it is requested until the requesting law enforcement officer receives the test results, can take as long as 12 months.

In order to permanently eliminate the rape kit backlog and test every booked rape kit in a timely manner, both city and county crime labs will require a significant increase in DNA analysts, expanded workspace for DNA testing, more efficient DNA testing methods and equipment, and a DNA evidence tracking system. DNA testing of rape kits is a complicated process,[27] but both the county and city crime labs can be more efficient in the way they process this critical evidence.

The National Problem

There is no doubt that crime labs across the country are inundated with requests for DNA testing. The most recent federal Census of Publicly Funded Crime Laboratories-released in 2008 using data collected in 2005-shows that during 2005 public crime labs saw their DNA backlog double from the beginning to the end of the year, and that public crime labs across the country would need to increase their DNA analyst staff by 73 percent to keep up with DNA testing needs and requests.[28]

Congress has recognized the problem of rape kit backlogs in crime laboratories. In 2004 Congress passed the Debbie Smith Act as part of the Justice for All Act.[29] The Debbie Smith Act established the Forensic DNA Casework and Backlog Reduction Grant Program, which provides federal funds for state and local law enforcement entities to test DNA evidence.[30] Both the Los Angeles City and County crime labs have been allocated substantial funding from the program, also known as the Forensic DNA Backlog Reduction Program. But it is not clear how much, if any, of the money was used to test rape kits. That the Police and Sheriff's Departments' rape kit backlogs remained constant or grew, despite millions of dollars in Debbie Smith Act funding, illustrates what is wrong with the current structure of the federal grant program to reduce rape kit backlogs in the US.

How Rape Kit DNA Testing Works

DNA testing has improved exponentially since it was first used in 1989 to convict a defendant in a criminal trial.[31] As DNA testing has evolved, so has the way DNA evidence is collected from the body of a rape survivor.[32]

When a person is raped and reports to the police or hospital, she will be asked by the hospital staff or the police to consent to the collection of a rape kit, a process which can last between four and six hours.[33] Rape kit collection can occur in a hospital emergency room or at a designated rape treatment center.[34] Human Rights Watch observed a simulated collection of a rape kit at the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, which is the largest rape treatment center in Los Angeles County.[35] After intake and counseling, which includes assessing and treating any critical care needs, the patient is interviewed to obtain a history of the assault. Then, a nurse practitioner conducts the medical and forensic examination. The victim undresses while standing over a large sheet of paper, and anything that falls from the clothing or body that may provide links to a perpetrator or a crime scene (for example, hairs, debris, and carpet or clothing fibers) is collected and placed in the rape kit. A sexual assault nurse examines the victim on a gynecological table with stirrups. The nurse scans the body with an ultraviolet light to find what may be otherwise undetectable semen or saliva that might contain the assailant's DNA. The nurse then swabs every part of the victim's body that the ultraviolet light fluoresces. The victim is examined from "head to toe" to identify any physical injuries sustained during the assault, which can include scratches, bruises, bite marks, ligature marks, and burst blood vessels caused by strangulation. Every visible physical injury is photographed. A magnifying digital camera called a colposcope-which is noninvasive and can photograph inside body cavities without requiring insertion-is placed near the anal, vaginal, and oral cavities to record any lacerations or other injuries inside those areas. The nurse then collects other samples, such as fingernail scrapings, pubic hair combings, and urine and blood, placing each in separate envelopes or tubes. The swabs are labeled and sealed in containers with evidence tape. All of the evidence is then placed in a large white envelope-the rape kit.[36]

In Los Angeles County, a police officer from the Los Angeles Police Department or Los Angeles Sheriff's Department takes the rape kit from the hospital or treatment center and books it into police evidence.[37] Victims may assume or believe the kit is then sent to the crime lab for testing. In reality, many rape kits have remained in police evidence storage facilities years after they were collected and were never tested (see Chapter VI). Even when kits are submitted to the crime lab for testing, it can take many months for the crime lab to get the test results back to the requesting detective. By comparison, the New York City DNA lab, which tests every rape kit booked into evidence by the New York Police Department, generally produces a test result in 30 to 60 days from the time the kit is received at the laboratory.[38] It should also be noted that on the day Human Rights Watch toured the New York City DNA lab, we observed just one rape kit that had been booked into evidence and was waiting to be opened.[39]

Los Angeles Regional Crime Laboratory

In 2007 the Police Department and the Sheriff's Department together opened the Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab (formally named the Hertzberg-Davis Forensic Science Center), a new crime laboratory built to house the Police and Sheriff's Departments' crime labs and to accommodate the growing need for forensic services in Los Angeles County.[40] At the time of the lab's opening, the inadequate space of the Police and the Sheriff's Departments' former laboratory spaces was cited as a cause of DNA testing backlogs, including the rape kit backlog. According to the Los Angeles Times, "DNA cases submitted by detectives are backlogged because technicians have room to process only 18 cases a week."[41]

The Los Angeles Regional Crime Lab has been nationally recognized for its "innovative" and "collaborative" approach[42] to combining and sharing "as much as possible."[43]Yet according to interviews with crime lab personnel conducted by Human Rights Watch, the regional crime lab is essentially two crime laboratories located in one building: the Police and the Sheriff function separately from one another. This lack of collaboration may hinder the lab's effectiveness. As one crime lab official told Human Rights Watch, "There is basically an invisible tape that runs down the halls of the building, and the criminalists from [the Police Department] and [the Sheriff's Department] make sure to stay on their side of the lines. We don't work together, and we don't always get along."[44] Officially, crime lab officials from both labs point to collaboration in training DNA analysts, the sharing of testing supplies, and joint efforts to create a DNA Academy for research, training, and development.[45] In this report, we discuss the Sheriff's (County) and Police Departments' crime labs separately, in accordance with how they function in practice.

Los Angeles County

The Los Angeles County crime lab, which is referred to as the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Scientific Services Bureau, serves the unincorporated areas and cities of Los Angeles County, except for the city of Los Angeles.[46]

Untested rape kits

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department estimates it has tested 700 rape kits over the past four years,[47] but determining the average length of time it takes the Sheriff's Department to test a rape kit is difficult. Advocates say it may take up to a year to get results on the kits that are tested. As the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department stated in response to a public records request from Human Rights Watch for such data, "[Current evidence tracking systems] are antiquated and are, thus, limited in their ability to track items."[48]

The Sheriff's Department does have plans for "a $3 million project … to replace aging evidence tracking systems with a modern, state-of-the-art, integrated property and evidence, laboratory information management system … [that will] use a single, shared database to track evidence from its collection, through testing and/or storage, all the way until its final disposition. It will also have the ability to track specific items such as sexual assault kits. The system will eventually include the results of all testing conducted on individual evidence items."[49] The Sheriff's Department estimates that it will have this system in place in September 2009.[50]

Prior to the Sheriff's Department's new policy of testing every booked rape kit, rape kit evidence was usually only tested when a detective requested testing and a supervisor in the crime lab agreed that the evidence merited testing. According to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department, "If the investigator chooses to initiate a request for examination, they contact a supervisor in the Scientific Services Bureau's Biology Section. The facts of the case are discussed, and if both the investigator and supervisor agree, the evidence is accepted for analysis … as a general rule, only those cases in which the evidence is of probative value are examined. For example, cases wherein the involved party is not in question are typically not processed."[51]

The previous policy of detective and forensic analyst supervisor discretion was of concern to rape treatment providers and victims' advocates in Los Angeles County. As one sexual assault nurse examiner commented, "While it is true that DNA evidence is most probative in cases where we need to figure out the identity of the perpetrator, it can also have great value in other kinds of cases. For example, if you test rape kits in cases where the identity of the alleged assailant is known, you can potentially match his DNA to rape kit evidence in other cases. Acquaintance rapists can be serial rapists. I have done a number of sexual assault exams on women who were raped by someone they knew, and given the details they described to me, I was pretty sure it was the same guy who committed each rape. But it is hard to get evidence tested in acquaintance rape cases, so their rape kits just sat there and who knows if I will see another victim of his come in for treatment."[52] Another nurse examiner told Human Rights Watch about a case where she believed the crime lab talked a detective out of requesting a rape kit for testing. "It was not a stranger rape case, and, according to the detective, the crime lab felt that testing would not help much. I encouraged the detective to continue to press for testing, but he told me that he didn't want to second-guess the crime lab, and then have it come back to hurt him when he needs the crime lab to test something else for him."[53]

Prospective benefits of cold hit notification in the new evidence tracking system

The Sheriff's Department's planned new evidence tracking system could ensure that cold hit results are passed along from the crime laboratory to multiple law enforcement personnel, including the appropriate investigating officers. Currently, the crime lab only informs the requesting officer of the test result.[54] Human Rights Watch spoke to an investigating officer with the Sheriff's Department who told us of a case in which he was not notified about a cold hit until weeks after it happened: "Part of the problem was that I was on vacation when the lab got the hit, and since the investigating officer on the case is the only one who gets told about the cold hit, well, I was on vacation and so my partner, who was in charge of the case while I was away, didn't know there had been this hit, and we sat on it for about three weeks before I got back and got the message that we had a hit to a guy in this rape case. It wasn't anybody's fault, it's just we need a better system to make sure cold hits get followed up on as quickly as possible."[55]

New York City eliminated its rape kit backlog. When this was accomplished, New York implemented a simultaneous cold hit notification system. When a DNA profile from a rape kit matches a DNA profile in the offender DNA database, electronic notification is automatically sent to the crime lab, sex crime prosecutors, and sex crime investigators.[56] As an assistant district attorney in Manhattan told Human Rights Watch, "The simultaneous notification gives more than one of us the opportunity to know about and assess the value of the cold hit."[57]

Delayed testing

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department did not disclose to Human Rights Watch the average time it takes to complete testing on rape kit evidence. Los Angeles County police officers related to Human Rights Watch conversations they have had with the crime lab in which they were told "not to expect any results back for six to nine months."[58]

By contrast, the Rape Treatment Center at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and the California Bureau of Forensic Sciences are partnering in a "Fast Track Forensics" program, with a grant from the California Department of Justice, in which evidence samples in stranger rape cases (specially taken in addition to the usual rape kit collection) are sent to the state crime lab and test results are received in five days.[59] Gail Abarbanel, the director of the center, told Human Rights Watch of the benefits that prompt test results had in one case: "A man broke into a woman's home during the day and raped her. We collected evidence and sent therape kit to the police crime lab. We also collected additional swabs from the places where we were most likely to find the offender's DNA on the victim. These swabs were 'fast tracked' and sent to the state crime lab for testing. They were analyzed within four days. A DNA profile was found and uploaded into the offender database. It resulted in a cold hit on a paroled, registered sex offender. The police were notified and, that same day, they arrested him. This kind of turnaround was unheard of before we implemented the Fast Track Forensics grant program. This is a clear example of how rape kit evidence, if utilized, can lead to the arrest of dangerous repeat offenders currently on the street, as well prevent future victimizations. This is what should happen in all sexual assault cases."[60]

According to Los Angeles County crime lab officials, rape kits requested for testing are placed in a queue and tested in the order they are received.[61] In certain cases, rape kits will be rushed for testing, for example, when the test is necessary to identify the perpetrator, or when a prosecutor needs the test results for a pending trial.[62] However, a Los Angeles County prosecutor told us that she has "had to twice delay trial for a girl raped by her stepfather, because the rape kit test results [were] not done yet after eight months at the lab."[63]

As of December 2008 the Los Angeles County crime lab had 475 rape kits awaiting testing or transport for storage (meaning some of them may have been tested and were to be sent back to police storage).[64]

Although Human Rights Watch does not have official data on how long it can take to get a requested test on a rape kit completed, we gathered information on individual cases in interviews with county law enforcement and rape treatment providers. Their experiences with testing delays highlight the effect such delays can have on rape investigations:

• A sexual assault nurse examiner told Human Rights Watch of treating a child who had been abducted and raped near a school bus stop. When the child described the attack, the details struck the provider as nearly identical to the story of another child who was abducted from the same bus stop and raped, and was treated at the same clinic three months prior. The provider wondered if the assailant could be the same man. When she contacted the police officer in charge of the investigation to inquire about the results of the rape kit test from the earlier case, he informed her that it was still awaiting testing at the crime lab, and might not be tested for another six months.[65]
• A Los Angeles Sheriff's Department investigator told Human Rights Watch of requesting testing in a 2007 case in which a woman was raped by a man she met at a party. She did not know his name, and could not identify him. When the investigating officer consulted with the Sheriff's Department Scientific Sciences Bureau he was told that if he submitted the kit it could take eight months to test. Discouraged by the long wait, he decided not to submit the kit and to try to find other investigative leads instead. As of January 2009 the case was still unsolved and the rape kit has never been submitted for testing.[66]
• A Los Angeles Sheriff's Department investigator told Human Rights Watch of requesting testing in a case in which a sex worker was raped by a customer. The investigator thought he might be able to link the assailant's DNA obtained in the rape kit from this case to rape kit evidence from other cases involving sex workers. When the investigator consulted with crime lab staff, he felt that they discouraged him from pursuing the testing because they did not think it would have probative value as the identity of the perpetrator was not an issue in the original case, and the kit would have to start at the end of the line and could take months to process. "Because sometimes you gotta know when to use your chits [favors] and when to save them for another case," the investigator did not push the crime lab to take the kit for testing. The investigator dropped the case entirely "because prosecutors might worry about the jury's reaction to a prostitute's rape claim."[67]

Present resources

As of February 2009 the Sheriff's Department DNA unit had twenty-one fully trained DNA examiners, eleven partially trained DNA examiners, five supervisors (four fully trained in DNA), three DNA examiners hired but awaiting training, two lab technicians, and one support staff.[68]

The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department Bureau of Forensic Services has publicly stated that it will require more DNA analysts to deal with the number of untested rape kits currently in its storage facility and to accommodate the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department's revised policy to send every rape kit booked into evidence to the crime lab for testing.[69]

When Human Rights Watch asked the Scientific Services Bureau how many additional DNA analysts were needed to permanently eliminate the rape kit backlog, we were told that the bureau "is still putting together a backlog elimination plan that addresses that issue."[70] According to a crime lab official, "The problem is not going to be space to house these analysts, but it's going to be tough to find the resources for them. We will ask the county for more money, and the state, and the federal government, but we may not get all that we need to hire the analysts we need."[71]

Debbie Smith grant money

A significant amount of money has already been made available to the Los Angeles County crime lab under the Debbie Smith Act (see above). Between 2004 and 2008 the crime lab was awarded $4.9 million in federal grant funds to test DNA evidence.[72] Members of Congress have framed their support of the Debbie Smith grant program in terms of how it can help reduce rape kit backlogs specifically.[73] But states can use their grants to test any kind of DNA backlog. There is no requirement that any of the money be spent on rape kit testing, and there is no requirement that entities like the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department account for how much, if any, of the grant money was spent on rape kit testing.[74] An employee of the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) responsible for administering the grant program told Human Rights Watch that USDOJ lacks the resources necessary to "oversee the grant program" for "every individual grantee," or "for something as specific as tracking money spent on rape kit testing."[75]

A report from California Congressman Howard Berman indicates that as of August 2008 the Sheriff's Department had used less than half of the Debbie Smith grant money it had received in the prior four years.[76]

Debbie Smith grant reports from the Sheriff's Department to the Office of Justice Programs obtained by Human Rights Watch do not indicate whether the Sheriff's Department used any of the grant money to test rape kits.[77] When Human Rights Watch asked a Sheriff's Department crime lab official about how the Debbie Smith money was used, he stated that "we have all kinds of DNA backlogs. We are starting to explore DNA testing in property crimes cases. We have many DNA needs beyond rape kit testing."[78]

City of Los Angeles

The City of Los Angeles crime lab serves the Los Angeles Police Department.

Untested rape kits

Determining the number of rape kits that were sent to the Los Angeles Scientific Services Bureau for DNA testing before the new policy to test every booked rape kit was announced is difficult. Like the Sheriff's Department, the Police Department does not yet have a comprehensive evidence data tracking system that would record such activity.[79]

While the number of booked rape kits that the Police Department received before detective discretion was eliminated is not known to Human Rights Watch, the crime lab currently has testing pending in about 520 sexual assault cases in which detectives had requested DNA analysis.[80]

Delayed testing

As far as Human Rights Watch can tell, the Police Department crime lab does not track the average time from receipt of a kit to completion of testing. According to one crime lab official, "This kind of information would require us to go back and look at every piece of paperwork for every kit requested for testing, and then go find the paperwork for when we got the results out to detectives. This is one reason why we need an electronic tracking system, so we could pull that kind of information up easily."[81] Crime lab officials told Human Rights Watch that if a detective requests "a rush" on a rape kit, the lab could have test results within five days, "but that would mean every single DNA analyst dropping everything they are working on to get those test results out."[82] Greg Matheson, Los Angeles Police Criminalistics Lab director, told Human Rights Watch, "Ideally, we want to see a 60-day turnaround on rape kit evidence, but we are not there yet."[83]

Human Rights Watch spoke with Police Department investigating officers and rape treatment providers, and sexual assault nurse examiners who work with the Police Department, to get a sense of the length and nature of testing delays and the effect they have on rape cases:

·An investigating officer told Human Rights Watch about a case he was working on in which a college student was raped as she tried to get into her car. The officer requested testing for the rape kit, but eight months after the request he still had not received test results. Asked whether he had inquired with the lab about the status of the case, he told Human Rights Watch, "You have to be careful about not getting on the lab's bad side by bothering them, because you need them for your next case."[84]

·A rape victims' advocate had a client whose rape kit test results came back more than a year after the rape had occurred. When an investigating officer told the rape victim that the DNA profile in the kit matched an offender in the DNA database, the victim no longer wanted to participate in the case. The advocate told Human Rights Watch, "She couldn't go back to the nightmare of her rape. I think that if the detective had been able to identify her rapist in the weeks and months after it happened, she would have been able to cooperate. But now she just wants to put it behind her."[85]

·A sexual assault nurse examiner told Human Rights Watch that she has made calls to crime lab personnel to check on the status of a submitted rape kit. "When I inquire about stranger rape cases, they can usually give me a testing timeframe of a few months, but if I am inquiring about an acquaintance rape case, it is a very low priority even if it's someone we think may be a serial acquaintance rapist, and there have been times when they can't even estimate when the kit will be tested because they can't give it priority."[86]

Present resources

According to one crime lab official, "We simply don't have the resources to meet the testing demands of our police department."[87] Another remarked, "We are helpless to test this backlog on our own. We cannot do it without more positions, and without outsourcing."[88]

The crime lab currently has funding for 47 DNA analysts; of those, 31 are fully trained and 10 are in the process of being hired.[89] The Police Department's Scientific Investigation Division estimates that it will need at least 22 additional DNA analysts[90] to deal with the number of untested rape kits in storage and to accommodate the Police Department's revised policy to send every rape kit booked into police evidence storage to the crime lab for testing.[91] Police Crime Lab Commander Yvette Sanchez-Owens told Human Rights Watch that a fully trained criminalist can screen (check for the presence of DNA in) 72 rape kits a year, or perform a full DNA profiling on 60 cases per year.[92]

Hiring an extra 26 DNA crime lab personnel will require additional funding of nearly $1.6 million a year.[93] While the City Council recently provided funding for hiring 18 DNA crime lab staff,[94] there is uncertainty as to whether it will be able or willing to provide additional funding in its 2009-2010 budget. Laura Chick, the city controller of Los Angeles and a former city councilmember, spoke to Human Rights Watch about the City Council's hesitation to provide more funding to the Police: "[The Police] already receive more than 50 percent of the entire city's budget. The City Council may say, 'If you want this funding so badly, find it in your $1.5 billion budget. Don't ask us for more money. We already give you enough.'"[95]

For the Los Angeles Police Department, finding the money necessary to fund these crime lab positions would require, in the words of Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, "difficult choices…. It could be a choice between giving our officers adequate radio equipment or adding more crime lab personnel. Both are important, and we need money for both things, and we don't have money for both things in our budget, which is why we need more support from City Council for these crime lab positions."[96]

Nevertheless, in addition to seeking additional City Council funding for crime lab positions the Los Angeles Police Department has pursued two other funding avenues-raising private money to outsource rape kits not previously requested for testing, and applying for Debbie Smith Act money.

Private donations for outsourcing

In the summer of 2008 the Los Angeles Police Foundation, a non-profit fundraising arm of the Los Angeles Police Department, announced an ongoing fundraising initiative to raise private money to outsource rape kits to private laboratories for testing.[97] To date, the Foundation has raised almost $1.7 million. As of January 2009, $254,000 of the money has been used to outsource untested rape kits.[98] Los Angeles City Councilmember Jack Weiss donated $350,000 from his city council office fund to the Police Department for DNA testing; as of January 2009, 99 kits have been outsourced to private crime labs for testing using Councilmember Weiss's donation.[99]

These private donations allow only for rape kit testing to be outsourced. One limitation to the use of private donations is that, under city regulations, the Los Angeles crime lab cannot use a non-permanent funding stream to hire government staff.[100]

Debbie Smith grant money

An October 2008 audit of the Los Angeles city crime lab's use of federal Debbie Smith grant money revealed that the number of untested rape kits continued to grow in the years 2004 to 2008 despite nearly $4 million in federal grant money made available for DNA backlog reduction during the same period.[101] The audit also found that as a penalty for the Police Department's "poor planning and oversight" of the grant awards, the federal government reduced the fiscal year 2008 grant to Los Angeles by more than half, from an anticipated $1 million to $500,000.[102] The report also found that the Police Department has never made a formal budget request to the City Council to deal with the rape kit backlog.[103]

Human Rights Watch requested this audit report from Controller Chick after we found inconsistencies in the Police Department's public comments on its use of the backlog reduction funds and in the reports it submitted to the federal government on the use of the funds.[104] In April 2008, in response to a public records request, Human Rights Watch received federal DNA funding grant reports revealing that as of December 2007 the Police Department had not yet used all funds it had been awarded in 2004, and had used none of the available money from 2005 to 2007.[105] During this time, the backlog of untested rape kits with the Police Department continued to grow. (Despite this, the US Department of Justice continued to award the Police Department the full funding it was eligible for under the grant program until 2008, when, as noted, it reduced its award by half.)[106]

When Human Rights Watch presented the grant reports to Police Department officials, they told us that "an accounting error" made it appear that the federal grant money had not been spent by the end of the reporting period, when in fact it had.[107] After the release of Controller's Chick's audit report, the Police Department acknowledged that as of October 2008 it still had $2 million in unspent Debbie Smith funds.[108]

For its part, the US Department of Justice has said that it is aware of the Police Department's problem and is "going to do what we can to assist them directly."[109]

Limitations to outsourcing

In a meeting with Human Rights Watch in May 2008, when asked why the Police Department had not yet outsourced all of its untested rape kits in police storage facilities, Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, then in charge of overseeing the department's response to the backlog, told us, "We would like to outsource more kits, but private crime labs have told us they are at capacity to test kits."[110] In August 2008, after an op-ed by Human Rights Watch on the rape kit backlog appeared in the Los Angeles Times, we were contacted by a principal at a private crime laboratory asking how that lab could offer its services to the Police Department.[111] Human Rights Watch gave the individual the contact information of the Police Department crime lab officials. In October 2008 Controller Laura Chick, in conducting her audit of the Police Department's use of federal funds to test rape kits, was told by the Police Department that it was not outsourcing more rape kits because it could not find a private crime lab that had the capacity to test the number of kits in the backlog.[112] Human Rights Watch then e-mailed the private lab that had contacted us in August to find out whether it had been able to connect with the Police Department with its offer to test the kits in the backlog. The private lab informed Human Rights Watch that three phone calls placed to Police Department crime lab officials since August regarding the offer had gone unreturned.[113] In December 2008 the private lab official contacted Human Rights Watch to inform us that the Police Department had contacted him and told him that the Police Department "currently has no need for additional private lab contractors."[114]