The Los Angeles Police Department would need $9.3 million to clear up a backlog of untested DNA evidence that could hold the key to solving hundreds of sexual assaults and other violent crimes, but state and local money is falling far short of covering the cost, officials say.
The problem was underscored by a state audit released Thursday that detailed the shortfall that has existed between state aid and local law enforcement needs.
Under Proposition 69, approved by voters in 2004 to expand California's DNA database, a special court fee was established to pay for DNA collection and analysis. Initially, most of the fee money went to the state crime lab, which was able to slash its own backlog of untested evidence.
The LAPD has received only $530,000 from the court fee over the last three years for DNA collection from felons, and nothing to analyze crime scene evidence, authorities said. The department expects to receive $1 million in state money next year for its crime lab, but officials say that will barely begin to close the gap.
Evidence from 6,700 LAPD sexual assault cases is stored in envelopes and cartons inside cold storage lockers and trailers at a city warehouse facility on the eastern fringe of downtown and in a trailer behind police headquarters. Each packet is a potential genetic road map to a rapist or killer, whose capture and conviction could bring some peace of mind to survivors and their families.
In some cases, police say, the rapist has confessed, or immediate analysis is not necessary for other reasons. But despite the launch of a new regional L.A. crime laboratory last summer and public expectations of "CSI"-style efficiency, packages have been sitting untested for up to a decade, LAPD officials acknowledged.
The logjam is particularly frustrating because the department has found that 37% of cases with DNA evidence produce a "hit," or match, when tested against the FBI's national DNA databank. And while the LAPD says it is keeping up with 30 new DNA evidence packets arriving each week, Chief William J. Bratton said the backlog may never be cleared without additional funding.
"Passion is not money, and this situation takes money we don't have," Bratton said in an interview Wednesday. "It is not for lack of desire. I had a [relative] who was very viciously raped, and I dealt with that firsthand when she was 14 years old.
