Nicholas Kamm / AFP / Getty Images
Millions of dollars will be allocated to test the massive backlog of neglected rape kits across the country, officials will announce Thursday.
Vice President Joe Biden, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., are expected to announce that testing the tens of thousands of backlogged evidence kits could lead to the identification of suspected rapists.
Between Vance’s office and the Department of Justice, almost $80 million will be set aside, NBC News reported.
Manhattan District Attorney’s office will provide $38 million in forfeiture funds toward the tests, officials tolf NBC News. The Department of Justice will set aside $41 million.
Vance’s office is giving grants – ranging from $97,000 to $2 million – to 32 agencies to test more than 56,000 evidence kits, according to NBC News. The funds are coming from settlements the district attorney’s office made with international banks that violated U.S. sanctions.
The Department of Justice will also provide grants – which were approved by Congress last fall – to test 13,500 kits in 20 jurisdictions.
In July, USA Today discovered hundreds of thousands of rape kits that sat untested in police departments across the country. In just 1,000 police agencies – a fraction of the country's 18,000 police departments – more than 70,000 kits were neglected.
In New York, 17,000 evidence kits were untested. Once those kits were tested, 49 indictments stemmed from the results in Manhattan alone.
Similarly, five years ago, Detroit prosecutor Kym Worthy discovered 10,000 untested kits. Once tested, the results yielded 487 suspected serial rapists and links to cases in 39 states, according to the Detroit Free Press.
LINK: Obama Administration Pushes Approval For $35 Million Proposal To End Rape Kit Backlogs
LINK: States Begin To Address Thousands Of Untested Rape Kits
from BuzzFeed - USNews http://ift.tt/1JXi4PT
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