khou.com
Posted on February 13, 2013 at 11:32 AM
Updated today at 11:33 AM
HOUSTON?A backlog of untested rape kits amassed by the Houston Police Department will be eliminated within about a year under a plan unveiled Wednesday by Mayor Annise Parker.
The city government will pay $4.4 million to private contractors who will test the kits, if city council approves.
?With this plan, we will finally be able to say the backlog is gone,? Parker said in a written statement.? ?The problem was years in the making and we?ve been working to solve it since I became mayor.?
The sexual assault kit backlog has been an embarrassing problem for the Parker Administration, which appointed a task force to tackle the problem.? An audit revealed that 6,663 rape kits have been stored and never processed.
Houston police officials gave a number of reasons for not testing the kits.? In some cases, for example, they say suspected rapists were arrested and charged based on other evidence.? In other cases, the victims knew their attackers or were unwilling to prosecute.
The two contractors, Bode Technology and Sorenson Forensics, will process the kits for about $400 each, city officials said.? That?s roughly a third the usual cost, officials said.? Ironically, Houston has so many unprocessed rape kits it was able to negotiate a sort of bulk rate, using the magnitude of the problem as leverage with contractors.
The contractors will also process another 1,450 kits from active cases, 1000 more HPD expects to receive in the coming year and 1020 DNA kits from other cases that didn?t involve sexual assaults.
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Source: http://www.khou.com/news/local/Mayor-unveils-plan-to-eliminate-HPD-rape-kit-backlog--191046031.html
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