The cost of the DNA backlog

It all comes down to the money.

In 2008, the Los Angeles city controller audited the Los Angeles Police Department after news broke that the agency lost $500,000 in federal grant money to help it reduce a backlog of forensic rape kits waiting for DNA testing. The Department of Justice reduced the funding amount following the LAPD’s failure to spend it due to what the audit called “poor planning and oversight.” 

Meanwhile, 7,000 rape kits sat in storage freezers for years - untested.

Each represents a rape victim, a person, awaiting justice that might never come. The auditor said the LAPD doesn’t have the resources it needs to fully resolve the backlog or keep up with the volume of new cases every year. 

For some victims, like Lavinia Masters, who was raped at 13, it’s already too late. the 20-year wait for evidence from her rape kit did point to a suspect but the statute of limitations had run out. A prosecution would never happen.

THE HUMAN COST

In California, prosecutors can pursue a rape case indefinitely if DNA evidence has been collected and tested within two years of the crime. Fail to do that and even with DNA, the law says charges have to be brought within 10 years.

According to the auditor, 218 cases slipped past the legal time limit as Los Angeles’ rape kit backlog grew into the thousands, meaning if the LAPD tested them now and found a suspect, he could never be prosecuted.

Who are these 218 victims? Officials say confidentiality laws prohibit them from releasing names, but it’s possible that until recently no one at the police department knew who they were. The victims themselves probably didn’t know either. It was only after the audit that the department took steps to comply with a 5-year-old law that requires police to notify victims in “stranger cases” – ones where they don’t know their attacker – of the status of their cases.

In its follow-up report to the auditor, City Controller Wendy Greuel, the department reported it had sent out 142 letters as of late last year, giving victims a status update and the opportunity to speak in person with someone at the department. Forty-two of those letters were returned, mostly because officials no longer had the correct contact information.

Greuel also made it clear that with current resources, the department probably won’t ever be able to fully eliminate the backlog, resulting in what some rape-victim advocates call an incalculable human cost. More cases will go unprosecuted and more rapists will go free.

As Sarah Tofte, who helped expose the backlog of rape kits in Los Angeles, wrote at Human rights Watch

As much as science has heralded in a new era of forensic prowess with the ability to produce near-incontrovertible evidence of guilt, it’s also partly to blame for the situation in Los Angeles and many cities just like it across the country. DNA testing is time consuming and costly and there are more cases and more victims than bureaucratic resources.

But, it might be science, once again, that can save the day.

NO REFRIGERATION NECESSARY

Dr. Judy Muller Cohn, co-founder of Biomatrica in San Diego, knows firsthand that biological samples like DNA are fragile.

Back in 1997, she was working for another biotech company when she arrived one morning to find that a freezer holding millions of dollars worth of DNA, RNA, cells and protein samples broken down during the night.

She lost everything — but, the disaster led to better things.

“We realized there was a big opportunity and we wanted to figure out if there was a better way to store samples,” Muller Cohn said.

So they went to work, finding inspiration in a microscopic bug called a tardigrade. Tardigrades live in some of the most inhospitable conditions on the planet, like the top of the Himalayas or in the sands of the Sahara. They also can live for years without water, dried up and inactive until moisture in the environment rises. In this state, a natural chemical protects their DNA and cellular structures from damage. The whole process is called anhydrobiosis, or life without water.

Muller Cohn and her husband, Dr. Rolf Muller, eventually were able to create a synthetic chemical that replicates the process of anhydrobiosis in tartigrades. Applied to biological samples like DNA in rape kits, it turns into a sort of shrink-wrap that stabilizes and preserves the DNA at room temperature. When a lab technician is ready to test it, all he or she has to do is apply a bit of water. 

“What our technology allows these forensic labs to do is to not need the freezer anymore,” Muller Cohn said.

For cash-strapped public agencies like the LAPD, that could represent a significant cost savings. This year, the department is expected to spend more than $3.5 million on water and electricity alone, according to city budget documents. Using a room-temperature storage technology like Biomatrica’s for its rape kits and cutting out energy-hogging freezers could potentially save millions that could instead go toward more lab technicians or more contractors to test such kits. 

The department also would save on shipping costs when it has to send kits to private labs. DNA stabilized with room-temperature storage technology can be shipped in a small box for a few dollars. Traditional cold storage methods require dry ice and hazardous-material handling.

Two police departments are already in the process of adopting Biomatrica’s room-temperature technology. One of those, in Washington state, also had a testing backlog and was looking for more efficient ways to ship and store its samples. In fact, in 2008, Stanford University undertook a pilot study that found that using Biomatrica’s products to store even just a small percentage of biological samples owned by labs in the medical school would save nearly $20 million over 10 years in energy costs alone, according to the study.

The LAPD didn’t respond to multiple calls regarding ways new technology like Biomatrica’s might help reduce the backlog and free up funds, and Ben Glombek, a spokesman for the controller, said he didn’t know if the department was pursuing or had looked into any alternative storage methods. But, he said, given the city’s budget deficit, he didn’t think any large-scale technology purchase would be possible even if the department was open to it.

Biomatrica’s technology, though, only requires the purchase of special plates to store biological samples. The transition, if the LAPD committed to it, could be done gradually simply by purchasing room temperature plates instead of new cold storage ones in the normal course of operating.

PROGRESS, BUT… 

Since the audit, the LAPD has managed to reduce its backlog by about 4,500 rape kits in a remarkably short time. But a follow-up audit by Greuel in 2009 still found problems.

For starters, the LAPD didn’t really know until very recently how many kits it has tested and how many it hasn’t - according to the controller - because officials have never taken an inventory of the actual kits in storage. Without an accurate count, it’s impossible to determine if the LAPD is making progress or just treading water. They said in their response that they have reconciled the physical inventory with their records and intend to keep at it so their numbers stay accurate.

The auditor also said in its second review that the department still isn’t keeping good track of new cases that come in, so a new backlog is forming but the department has no way of identifying how quickly it’s growing because new rape kits aren’t distinguished from old ones. Their information technology is old, too. Three different divisions within the department use three different databases, none of which are integrated. The auditor says they contain overlapping and, sometimes, contradictory information about rape cases and evidence kits.

The LAPD agreed with Greuel, but says it doesn’t have funding to upgrade its database.

Meanwhile, police officials outsource some rape kit testing to private labs, but— the FBI doesn’t allow private labs to upload DNA results to its national database, CODIS. So, the LAPD has to undertake a technical review of the kit anyway, to verify results.

In a letter late last year, the controller told the LAPD that the need for additional testing “is outrageous and has created a whole new backlog. There are now 1,102 kits that have to wait an average of 72 days for this SECOND REVIEW! We need to press the FBI to immediately change their policy.”

The department responded that it had, on more than two occasions, and that there is “growing pressure” on the FBI nationwide to change its policy. Officials say they have obtained a second grant to help eliminate the second backlog the policy has created.

After the LAPD submitted its responses to the controller’s audit earlier this year, Greuel sent a letter to the Chief of Police Charlie Beck in February saying she was pleased the department seemed to agree with her office’s overall findings and that it started implementing some of the changes above to fix the backlog.

But, she said, her staff will take another look soon, making sure the LAPD not only does what it’s promised, but keeps going. That report is expected sometime this summer or early fall. Also, the state is probing a similar backlog at the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office, which covers the entire county of Los Angeles.

As for overall budget problems and how they contributed to the backlog, there is some hope on the horizon. This March, in an emergency session, the state legislature passed a bill that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed, increasing the amount convicted criminals pay into the state’s DNA testing fund by 300 percent.