U.S. Sen. John Cornyn has introduced legislation that would help clear the staggering number of untested rape kits in Houston Police storage – some 6,663 at the agency’s last count – and help eliminate a nationwide backlog.
During a Wednesday news conference, city and police officials along with victims’ rights advocates pledged support for the Sexual Assault Forensic Evidence Registry or SAFER Act, bipartisan legislation intended to reduce what is an estimated national rape kit backlog of nearly 400,000.
Houston Mayor Annise Parker said the city receives between receive $800,000 and $900,000 grant money for kit testing. If passed, the legislation would allow the federal government to allot at least an extra $100,000 to HPD for kit testing and also allow the department to compete for a portion of $7 million to $9 million in grants, she said.
Police officials did not provide figures on the amount of rape kits that were tested since HPD reported figures at the beginning of the year. HPD Asst. Chief Matt Slinkard said evidence from rape kits are tested daily. He said HPD received about 930 new sexual assault cases per year in addition to its backlog of untested rape kits.
‘”These numbers are dynamic, they are not static, they do change,” Slinkard said.
Current laws require 40 percent of funds allocated to state and local governments be used for testing of untested DNA evidence. The SAFER Act would increase that to 75 percent, Cornyn said.
“What I want to do is make sure of the money that the federal government spends, it will be roughly $117 million this next year alone, goes to testing these untested kits,” the Republican lawmaker said.
Along with creating a national registry to help track and prioritize untested rape kits, the bill would also provide funding to state and local governments to audit untested DNA evidence. However, Parker said Houston was more focused on testing sexual assault kits.
“We don’t need to do any more audits,” she said. “We need to test and as I indicated, we will aggressively compete for these (federal) dollars to move forward.”
Anita Hassan, Houston Chronicle