IAPE Evidence Blog

Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, chron.com
BYLINE: ZAIN SHAUK, HOUSTON CHRONICLE
Link to Article

Hous­ton, TX

Back­log esti­mate dou­bles to at least 6,000, depart­ment confirms

The Hous­ton Police Department’s back­log of untested rape kits totals between 6,000 and 7,000 — 50 per­cent more than what offi­cials pre­vi­ously acknowl­edged, accord­ing to a memo from Chief Charles McClelland.

HPD for years has insisted that the back­log of untested rape kits was around 4,000. The details from the chief’s memo con­firm a Hous­ton Chron­i­cle report that the back­log likely was far greater.

The back­log also is likely to con­tinue to grow. Accord­ing to McClelland’s memo, HPD receives some 930 new rape kits each year. HPD offi­cials pre­vi­ously have said the depart­ment is able to test only 30 to 40 a month.

A back­log that could include as many as 7,000 untested rape kits should be a cause for major con­cern, said Johnny Mata, an activist for the Greater Hous­ton Coali­tion for Justice.

“There’s peo­ple in jail that may be inno­cent,” Mata said. “There’s women that may be fear­ing for their lives. It’s unacceptable.”

McClelland’s five-page memo was pro­duced in response to a series of ques­tions from Coun­cil­woman Jolanda Jones, who lec­tured depart­ment and city offi­cials dur­ing a City Coun­cil meet­ing Wednes­day for being unre­spon­sive. Jones said HPD and city offi­cials had been vague in response to her lengthy inquiry about progress in research­ing and exam­in­ing a back­log of sex­ual assault kits.

Fund­ing awarded

The dis­cus­sion was prompted by a coun­cil vote to accept a National Insti­tute of Jus­tice grant total­ing $821,814 to study and test Houston’s back­log of untested kits. The fund­ing is part of a two-phase, $1.14 mil­lion award from the NIJ. The bulk of the money will go toward deter­min­ing the rea­sons rape kits go untested and how to reduce the back­log more quickly.

Jones was the only coun­cil mem­ber to vote against accept­ing the second-phase money, say­ing she could not gauge whether pre­vi­ous grant dol­lars were being used effec­tively, based on the infor­ma­tion from HPD.

Mayor Annise Parker said that the city could not pro­vide an exact fig­ure for the amount of untested rape kits but offered a range of 6,000 to 7,000.

“We do not have an exact num­ber of rape kits in each cat­e­gory because part of these dol­lars were to do an audit of exactly that and we have endeav­ored to explain that process to you,” Parker said to Jones.

McClelland’s memo explained that the depart­ment was work­ing to final­ize an audit rel­a­tive to the num­ber, “how­ever, the ini­tial inven­tory count­ing is complete.”

Respond­ing to Jones’ ques­tions about the num­ber of kits tested, McClelland’s memo stated that the two-phase NIJ grant “allows for approx­i­mately 320 cases to be out­sourced for test­ing. That out­sourc­ing process is ongo­ing.” The grant has also sup­ported the screen­ing of 1,000 kits, so far. The screen­ing is used to deter­mine whether there is enough bio­log­i­cal evi­dence for a sex­ual assault kit to be used for DNA testing.

Past prob­lems

The depart­ment con­ducted an audit that deter­mined that between 16,000 and 17,000 rape kits dat­ing back to the 1980s are stored in HPD’s prop­erty divi­sion, the memo said. Of those, roughly a third, or between 6,000 and 7,000, have not been examined.

DNA test­ing at HPD’s crime lab was tem­porar­ily sus­pended in 2002, after an inde­pen­dent audit revealed shoddy foren­sic work, includ­ing unqual­i­fied per­son­nel, lax pro­to­cols and facil­i­ties that included a roof that leaked rain­wa­ter onto evidence.

Since the lab resumed oper­a­tions five years ago, the roof and other inte­rior prob­lems have been fixed. The lab also has reduced or elim­i­nated back­logs in areas such as nar­cotics and ballistics.

Cut­ting down the rape kit back­log has been a chal­lenge because of a lack of resources and per­son­nel, HPD offi­cials have said.

HPD spokesman John Can­non said the first phase of the grant, total­ing $178,000, was to “help us deter­mine the rea­sons for the back­log and to pre­vent that from hap­pen­ing again in the future.”

Coun­cil­man Oliver Pen­ning­ton called for reg­u­lar reports on progress to work through the backlog.

For­mer chief’s support

Coun­cil­man C.O. Brad­ford, the for­mer police chief, agreed with the nature of Jones’ inquiry, which he called “quite volu­mi­nous,” but said HPD had pro­vided enough infor­ma­tion to war­rant sup­port for the grant.

“I’m con­vinced that Chief McClel­land is doing every­thing that he pos­si­bly can and that he takes it very, very seri­ously and under­stands the impact that the analy­sis of these kits that are being stored can have on our crim­i­nal jus­tice process today,” Brad­ford said. “But it comes down to resource and this is an exam­ple of resources being gar­nered to help move for­ward in the process.” 

zain.shauk@chron.com, twitter.com/zainshauk

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