MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Sexual Assault Kit Taskforce reported on Tuesday that 51% of the untested rape kits in the city have been analyzed or sent to the lab.
According to the news release, 6,286 kits fall into that category.
Thanks to the recent DNA testing, the Memphis Police Department has opened 488 investigations.
Seventy-two percent, or 352, have been reclassified as closed.
That means 136 were still being investigated.
The real shocker here is the fact that 52 suspects have been identified, and of those 23 are believed to be serial offenders.
“The task force is sending kits for analysis as fast as the labs will take them,” said Memphis Mayor A C Wharton. ” Priority is given to cases in which the statute of limitations is close to running out. Unfortunately, labs locally and across the country are operating at capacity as more cities are addressing large inventories of untested kits. Fortunately, we are a bit ahead of the rush having started our process nearly two years ago.”
The Memphis Police Department said in some of the cases they have not been able to get in contact with the survivors.
That’s why they are urging everyone who has ever reported an assault to call the MPD Hotline at (901) 636-3438.
A National Problem
There are still more than 9,000 untested rape kits in crime labs in five major U.S. cities, according to information obtained by the national group Joyful Heart Foundation.
The backlog includes more than 2,800 untested kits in San Diego, California; nearly 2,000 in both Jacksonville, Florida and Portland, Oregon; more than 1,300 in Kansas City, Missouri; and more than 1,000 in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Federal estimates indicated that there were probably hundreds of thousands of untested kits nationwide.
Meanwhile on Tuesday, Michigan officials announced that state law enforcement agencies would bolster resources to bring charges connected to the testing of thousands of rape kits that were found in a Detroit police storage facility in 2009.
A Senate committee will hold a hearing Wednesday to end the backlog.
In 2009, CBS News reported that investigators often ignored DNA evidence collected from victims in sexual assault kits.
Thousands of these rape kits have gathered dust for years, but the CBS News report and subsequent coverage have helped persuade some police departments to begin testing them.
Some cities like Memphis, Cleveland and Detroit have chosen to tackle their backlog by securing new funds to test and then prosecute the DNA hits they find.
In Ohio, they tested 9,000 kits and found 490 cases connected to serial rapists according to the state crime lab.
There were signs that attitudes and resources for testing kits were changing.
Last fall, CBS This Morning reported that Seattle only tested 22% of their rape kits.
Since that story aired, Seattle announced they will test all of their kits, and just last week, the Washington state governor signed a law saying that all rape kits collected in the state are to be tested within 30 days.
