Official Seeks Police Plan for DNA Backlog

Los Angeles City Councilman Jack Weiss called on Los Angeles police officials Tuesday to account for how they plan to process DNA rape evidence when state funding runs out in the fall.

Weiss proposed that the Los Angeles Police Commission and LAPD report back within 45 days on how much evidence still must be analyzed before being entered into a state database.

“Rapists are the most notorious repeat offenders, so we have to make sure that the LAPD is both clearing the backlog of past cases and has a plan to test evidence in real time for future cases,” he said.

The move comes as a three-year $50-million state grant to pay for DNA analysis from older rape cases is set to expire.

With the grant unlikely to be extended because of the state budget crisis, the city set aside nearly $1 million in the fiscal year 2003-04 budget for processing DNA rape evidence. Such evidence can be contained in hair, skin, blood and other bodily fluids.

In looking at the department’s performance, Weiss said he wanted to make sure that crime victims and the city were getting their money’s worth.

He said he was also looking to avoid repeats of damaging incidents, such as the LAPD’s disclosure last year that its detectives had authorized the destruction of biological evidence in about 1,000 cases.

Currently, lab analysis of older DNA rape evidence at the LAPD is processed through the state’s “cold-hit program,” which covers the costs of examining DNA in sexually motivated cases and entering it into a state database containing more than 200,000 DNA samples.

Hundreds of thousands of additional genetic samples are available through the FBI national database.

Gail Abarbanel, director of the nonprofit Rape Treatment Center in Santa Monica, said that, by examining DNA rape evidence in a timely fashion and building a comprehensive database, police can move from bolstering cases to actually solving them.

“DNA had been seen as a means to prove your case but not to solve it, as icing on the cake,” Abarbanel said. “But now it can be used as an investigative tool to solve cases.”

LAPD Det. Dave Lambkin, who heads the Robbery/Homicide Division’s cold-case unit, said that continued funding of DNA analysis is crucial for three reasons: It provides quicker closure for victims, saves time and money on investigations and helps prevent sexual predators from victimizing others.

“It’s much more cost-effective to get DNA and fingerprint evidence processed quickly, because we can potentially identify suspects in a very short period of time,” Lambkin said.

The alternative is going through all the investigative steps, which may not necessarily lead to the identity of an offender, he said.