The Athens-Clarke County Police Department has worked through its entire backlog of rape kits, it said today.
In response to reports of thousands of unprocessed rape kits in Georgia, the state legislature (after some resistance) passed a law earlier this year mandating that law enforcement agencies submit rape kits to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation crime lab within 30 days of collection.
At the time, it was reported that ACCPD had 159 untested kits dating back to 1993. That number was actually 177, the department said in a news release.
Efforts to identify those kits began in mid-2015. Eleven had been destroyed, three couldn’t be found but are presumed destroyed, and the rest have been sent to the GBI for testing, according to ACCPD.
“With the submission and testing of these kits, it is our hope that perpetrators can be identified, located and arrested for the violent crime committed against these victims,” police said.
This may or may not be related to Monday’s announcement, but local officials (including law enforcement) recently came under criticism from The Cottage for not attending a screening of The Hunting Ground, a documentary about sexual assault on college campuses.
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