You look at stacks that go, like, from floor to ceiling of thousands of
these evidence boxes. Knowing that there's been no justice for anything in there either just makes it even worse.
In this warehouse are 4,000 box envelopes
representing 4,000 untested rape kits--
which, if you think about it, is thousands of women and thousands of alleged rapes that went uninvestigated by local police.
According to a state audit, New Mexico has the dubious distinction of possessing the most
untested rape kits per capita in the United States.
In late January, the new mayor of Albuquerque signed this executive order. The order, in short, essentially forces the City of Albuquerque,
and our crime lab, and the police department to come up with a plan to end the rape kit backlog and
the backlog goes back 30-plus years.
So let's define our terms. A rape kit is a medical evidence kit collected after a sexual assault.
It contains DNA and other evidence left on or inside a victim's body--things like hair fibers or body fluids.
When I talk about untested rape kits, I'm talking about the thousands of kits that are, for various reasons, never sent for DNA analysis.
That end up sitting in crime lab storage units collecting dust.
It's likely that there are hundreds of thousands of untested rape kits in America.
But no one knows exact numbers because many states aren't required to count or track rape kits.
We went around to every police department in the state. Mayor Keller discovered over
5,000 untested rape kits when he worked as New Mexico state auditor.
We would actually, physically, went into those police departments and sheriff's offices. In some of our rural areas,
you'll find evidence in cardboard boxes,
you'll find evidence rooms in the basement of old police stations. I cried a bunch of times in those rooms.
In some cases, local sheriffs tried to literally bar the door when Keller's team showed up. He had to threaten them with subpoena powers.
Later, local PDs were asked to explain themselves. In some cases,
they said they didn't test the kits because they didn't need the DNA evidence.
But there was this other thing... For about 20 percent of the kits we found,
unfortunately, that it was sort of a symptom of not believing the victim. Words like, "witness didn't cooperate,"
"witness didn't follow up"--those things are really
coded language for,
"We didn't want to test the kit because we didn't believe the victim."
But we need to step back from this, because untested rape kits have been on the national agenda before. Back in 2015, the Obama
administration invested $41 million in a new sexual assault kit initiative and Congress has since approved
$131 million to help states clear their backlogs and re-engage with victims.
Both the state of New Mexico and the City of Albuquerque got millions in federal money. But while the state began testing its kits,
Albuquerque, which has its own labs, barely made a dent.
What you're saying is there's not even a plan on how to do it?
How has this happened? Is it incompetence, is it a lack of commitment to the issue from the previous administration?
People were saying all the right things and doing very little. And then the news cycle moved on.
Thirty-two states have passed some sort of reform legislation
New Mexico is one of them. Since Mayor Keller took over, Albuquerque sent around
300 kits for testing. Each city councilor gets a couple of million dollars just to spend on parks and stop signs.
This really is about priorities. If we put the same kind of effort that we did into building a new fountain
downtown, we could have eliminated half the rape kit backlog.
NBC Left Field has an eye on law enforcement. If you found this story interesting, I'd recommend our film about a mysterious
diagnosis that's being used to explain death in police custody. Of course, if you don't already, please subscribe to NBC Left Field.