Rape kits no longer backlogged, but some still shelved

PIMA COUNTY, AZ (Tucson News Now) - Law enforcement, attorneys, forensic examiners and social workers from across the state are taking part in a training program to improve the way they handle sexual assault cases.

"Sexual Assault Response Teams: Responding to Trauma and Holding Offenders Accountable" is a two-day effort to identify best practices and trends, trauma services and enhanced technology.

The group discussed untested sexual assault evidence kits during Wednesday's session.

Backlog has been a problem for police agencies for years, but law enforcement has made great strides in tackling the number of untested rape kits.

The Department of Public Safety said Wednesday the state crime lab has zero rape kits that have gone untested.

The Tucson Police Department processes most of their rape kits through its own crime lab in midtown, but some kits remain shelved.

Tucson Police Sgt. Pete Dugan said their agency is quick to test evidence kits in cases where the victim does not know the perpetrator. Such cases, he says, are "priority one." Evidence collected in cases where there is a known suspect, he said, can come down to a question of whether the encounter was consensual.

Known suspect and unknown suspect is the difference in whether a kit gets tested.

The reason is funding.

Agencies including TPD are less willing to spend money to analyze DNA when the suspect is already identified. That won't stop the agency from trying.

The Tucson Police Department has applied for a $1 million grant to tackle more of those kits.

It costs up to $1,500 to process a sexual assault evidence kit. However, one expert said that's not an excuse to neglect certain evidence.

Retired detective sergeant Jim Markey worked on a sex crimes unit in Phoenix for more than a decade.

He said some big cities shifted money around, applied for grants, and started testing kits that most agencies would not call priority cases.

"They found that they were linking cases between offenders that were known and cases that had a stranger," Markey said.

That means some sexual abusers attacked people they know as well as people they didn't know. Testing all types of rape kits allowed those agencies to make the connection and generate leads.

"It supports and validates the victim coming forward," he said.

According to numbers gathered by the Southern Arizona Center Against Sexual Assault, the Pima County Sheriff's Department reported 77 sexual assaults and 529 sexual offenses in 2014, and the Tucson Police Department reported 1,734 sexual assaults in 2014.