Audit finds hundreds of rape kits still need to be tested in Sacramento
SACRAMENTO -- Hundreds of untested sexual assault evidence kits are sitting on shelves at the Sacramento Police Department. That is despite a state law requiring they be reported.
Sacramento held an Audit and Budget committee meeting on Tuesday to present the audit that was conducted on the police department's handling of sexual assault evidence kits.
People at the meeting were frustrated that hundreds of kits were never tested. Sacramento's mayor himself said there may need to be some apologies made to the victims.
Before 2019, law enforcement agencies were not mandated to process all the rape kits. Since the law passed, the Sacramento Police Department has been 100% in compliance, testing all 973 kits that have come in.
This was Senate Bill No. 22, also known as the Sexual Assault Victims' DNA Bill of Rights, that required all sexual assault evidence kits be tested by law enforcement agencies.
The Sacramento Police Department still has just under 300 untested kits from prior to 2016 that date back to the 1980s.
"It is already really difficult to report a sexual assault and really difficult to heal from that," said CEO of Sacramento rape crisis center, WEAVE, Beth Hassett.
Hassett said the number of untested kits did not surprise her.
Assembly Bill No. 3118 required law enforcement agencies to conduct an audit of all sexual assault evidence kits and report the number of tested and untested kits to the Office of the Attorney General.
The 2020 statewide report found there were over 13,000 untested sexual assault evidence kits in California, but over 500 law enforcement agencies did not participate -- the Sacramento Police Department being one of them.
Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg asked the police department why this was. The department did not have the answer.
"We are working expeditiously to address these opportunities for improvement," said the City of Sacramento's auditor Jorge Oseguera.
Since then, the department has counted all the untested kits finding about 291 were untested. Of those 291, Sac PD said about 270 were sent to the crime lab but were never tested. The Chief of Police did not have the answer why.
It is submitting this data of untested kits to the state even though it is past the deadline for the report that was made in 2020.
"I want to be clear that testing these kits prior to 2016 is not a requirement, but it is definitely desirable to have as many of them tested as possible," said Oseguera.
In the audit, the Sacramento Police Department said kits went untested because of low staffing, lack of funding, and that many victims were uninterested in pursuing prosecution and did not want the kit tested.
It may not be a requirement from the state, but Sac PD is working to get the untested kits tested. It is hiring retired police officers to help test kits, finding funding, and creating a new policy for testing.
"So, you can determine under what terms can a sexual assault kit be disposed of and how to go about executing that disposition," Oseguera said.
Hassett is working closely with the Sacramento Police Department in getting all the untested kits tested. She said she is proud of the work the department is doing moving forward.
"It has made a big difference in the mental health of survivors to know that they have taken every possible step and law enforcement is paying attention and believing them," said Hassett.
You can read the full audit of the Sacramento Police Department's handling of sexual assault evidence kits here.