Post by Anja Nieser on Sept 14, 2006 11:42:41 GMT -5
Massive Backlog Plagues DNA Lab----A lack of funds for the state's
voter-approved database leaves crimes unsolved, some say.
2 years after California set out to create a vast DNA database to help
unravel thousands of unsolved crimes, the program is being severely
hampered by a lack of resources, officials across the state say.
The state crime lab has a backlog of more than a quarter-million DNA
samples it is unable to process because of a funding shortfall and a lack
of manpower, directors acknowledge. At its current rate, the lab would
need 2 1/2 years to clear the backlog - if it received no more samples.
But that is unlikely because it is taking in about 20,000 samples a month,
officials said.
State officials, Los Angeles police officers and the director of a rape
treatment center in Santa Monica say the backlog means that crimes are
going unsolved and that criminals who could be arrested may still be
walking the streets.
"There will come a time when we will be sitting on a case where we have
the offender profile and we are waiting for a match in [the database] who
is among the 300,000 unprocessed samples and this offender will strike
again," said Tim Marcia, a veteran detective in the LAPD's cold-case unit
who has used DNA to solve rapes and murders.
The problems stem from overly optimistic funding projections when
California voters in November 2004 resoundingly passed Proposition 69,
designed to make the state the nation's leader in the use of DNA
technology as a crime-solving tool.
Proposition 69 requires all convicted felons, certain misdemeanor
offenders and those arrested for rape or murder to give up DNA samples.
Prison officials swab offenders' mouths with an object called a buccal
which looks like a tongue depressor. The samples are subjected to genetic
testing, and the results are uploaded into the FBI laboratory's Combined
DNA Index System, known as CODIS. DNA evidence from crime scenes can be
run against the database for matches that will help identify suspects.
More than 285,000 DNA samples have been added to the database, and the
program has yielded 2,670 "hits" in some long-languishing cases. But
despite those successes, the funding problems have resulted in a backlog
of more than 287,000 unprocessed DNA samples.
"Proposition 69 is the gold standard model for the world, but full and
robust implementation is currently hamstrung," said Bruce Harrington, the
Newport Beach home developer who financed the ballot measure in 2004 and
continues to "hope that DNA will help solve the 1980 murder of my brother
Keith and his wife, Patty."
Harrington said the primary reason for the backlog is that the state crime
lab in Richmond, under its union contracts, pays dramatically lower
salaries than local crime labs, making it difficult to hire young
scientists and hang onto more experienced ones.
Lance Gima, director of forensic services for the state attorney general,
said the starting salary at the Richmond lab is $3,100, compared with
$4,600 a month at the Los Angeles Police Department laboratory and $4,200
a month at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Labs in large
Northern California cities also pay more than the state, Gima said.
Although the program was supposed to pay for itself, it has not been fully
funded. Under the law, the counties were to turn over $1 of every $10 in
misdemeanor fines to a "penalty pot," amassing an estimated $25 million a
year for the project. Instead, for reasons that are unclear, not all the
counties are contributing, and the penalty pot stands at only $7.5
million.
A new state law allocates another $1 for each additional $10 in fines.
Harrington and Gima called that a positive step but said it will not
ensure that the fines are collected and the money sent to the state.
The problem will probably get worse in 2009, when officials, as part of
Proposition 69, will start taking samples from all persons arrested on any
felony, not just those convicted of felonies. In 2004, the latest year for
which figures were available, there were 522,781 felony arrests in
California.
For Gail Abarbanel, director of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa
Monica-UCLA Medical Center, the program has been a source of both
exhilaration - some rape cases have been solved rapidly - and enormous
frustration.
"We have the law, the technology and the voice of the public behind Prop.
69, but we also have a lot of valuable DNA evidence waiting to be
processed," Abarbanel said. Consequently, she said, the program has not
come close to fulfilling its potential to "put California in the forefront
of utilizing the science of DNA to enhance public safety."
Abarbanel said she leaves her office many nights with "a feeling of dread"
that a rapist whose unprocessed DNA sample is sitting on a warehouse shelf
in Richmond will strike again.
Prominent criminal defense lawyers also are alarmed by the program's
failings.
"It is a loss for prosecutors who want to expeditiously solve crimes
before the perpetrators can commit more acts of violence and a loss for
innocent suspects who do not want to be wrongly arrested and prosecuted,"
said Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project at Benjamin
Cardozo Law School in New York, which has used DNA evidence to exonerate
more than 180 wrongly convicted people over the last 15 years.
Currently, the state lab, in a modest office park, has 34 unfilled jobs.
At the same time, it faces an onslaught of new work. Before the passage of
Proposition 69, Gima said, the lab processed about 40,000 samples a year
from serious and violent felons. Then the deluge began.
"We expected 117,000 samples in the 1st year," Gima said. But 150,000
samples came in. "We expected 237,000 samples in the 2nd year. We received
284,000 samples."
Gima complimented state corrections officials for efficiently collecting
samples. But the Richmond lab simply has been unable to keep up - even
with many staffers working overtime and weekends.
"We are very proud of what we have accomplished but we are not happy with
that backlog," Gima said.
The new law provides that if the state lab is unable to process a sample
within 6 months, it should be sent to a private lab.
So far, the state has sent 166,000 samples to three private labs. However,
the state lab has to verify every DNA profile the private lab processes,
adding to its workload. Earlier this year, the state had to stop sending
out samples because it couldn't pay the private labs, Gima said.
"DNA testing has really outstanding potential in terms of not only helping
the police to investigate crimes and also exonerate people who are
innocent. But there are a lot of gaps to get DNA where it needs to go,"
said Barry Fisher, longtime director of the Los Angeles County sheriff's
crime laboratory.
Fisher said it was shocking that the program has not been adequately
funded, given its potential to solve cases and to prevent crimes by
identifying perpetrators before they strike again. "Why don't we give the
people the tools to get the job done?"
Greg Thompson, director of the San Diego County sheriff's crime lab, said
some people in law enforcement are aware of the problem but few have
spoken out about it. He said it was regrettable "that there was not some
mandate" that local officials collect the fines and pass part of them on
to the state. "I have been telling people, 'You have to understand this is
not a self-executing law.' "
Still, he emphasized that despite the problems, "we are getting
substantially more hits than we did before."
Before the passage of Proposition 69, Thompson said, his department was
getting about two hits - DNA matches to crime scenes, including
burglaries, rapes and murders - a year from the database. "Now we get two
a week," Thompson said.
Veteran Los Angeles Police Det. Veda Young, who used the database to find
a suspect in a Southeast Los Angeles rape in mid-July, also applauded the
program. The suspect, who was in the database because of a drug
conviction, was arrested and has been ordered to stand trial, she said.
"The fact that it happened as soon as it did was just wonderful," said
Young, who emphasized that speed is particularly important in rape cases.
When rape investigations drag out, "you tend to lose victims in the
process."
**
DNA backlog
As of Aug. 31, California had not processed about a third of the DNA
samples taken from felons for a national database.
818,232: Total samples collected
530,938: Samples processed
287,294: Backlog
14,165: Crime scene DNA samples checked against database
2,670: Matches (18.8% success rate)
[source: Bureau of Forensic Services of the California Department of
Justice]
*******************
Schwarzenegger Names New Corrections Chief----James Tilton, who had been
acting secretary, faces overcrowding, deteriorating inmate medical care
and a high recidivism rate.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, struggling to find an answer to the ongoing
woes inside the state prison system, named a new corrections chief
Wednesday the man who since this spring has run the department.
Schwarzenegger said he was handing the reins of the massive Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation to James Tilton, a 3-decade veteran of
state government who has been acting secretary since April.
Tilton, 57, will earn $220,000 a year, making him one of the state's
highest-paid employees. His predecessor, Roderick Q. Hickman, earned
$131,412 a year when he stepped down in February.
The governor offered no explanation for the dramatic, nearly 70%, raise,
but noted in a statement that "California's correctional system is at a
crisis point."
Schwarzenegger said Tilton would "deliver cost-effective solutions to
relieve the dangerous overcrowding in our state prisons, as well as
prepare inmates so they do not re-offend when they return to our
communities."
Tilton was unavailable for comment.
As corrections secretary, he occupies what is probably the most
challenging job in state government.
He oversees a department with a budget of more than $8 billion, 58,000
employees and 33 adult prisons holding roughly 172,000 inmates. He is also
responsible for the state's 3,000 juvenile prisoners, as well as more than
110,000 parolees.
In recent years, the state prisons have been beset by problems that
include overcrowding, a deteriorating inmate medical care system and a
recidivism rate that is the nation's highest, with more than half of all
parolees returning to prison within several years.
The job is also complicated by the role the federal courts have come to
play. This year, a federal receiver was put in charge of the healthcare
system for inmates and a special master oversees mental health care in
prisons under the supervision of a federal judge.
And then there is the 30,000-member prison guards union that has
exceptional clout in Sacramento.
The union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., is deadlocked
in negotiations with the Schwarzenegger administration over a contract to
replace one that expired in July.
When he was appointed acting secretary earlier this year, Tilton said his
tenure would be temporary, while the administration conducted a nationwide
search for a permanent chief.
His top priority, he said then, was to "put the department's fiscal house
in order" and "assemble a management team to turn the department around."
Since then, he has brought in top assistants and recently said he relished
the opportunity to revive a correctional system that has been widely
maligned by legislators, judges and other critics.
Before his appointment, Tilton served as a program budget manager for the
Department of Finance, overseeing corrections, consumer services and other
areas. In the 1980s and '90s, he was deputy director of administrative
services in corrections, responsible for peace officer selection,
personnel, training, budget matters and environmental health and safety.
(source for both: Los Angeles Times)
voter-approved database leaves crimes unsolved, some say.
2 years after California set out to create a vast DNA database to help
unravel thousands of unsolved crimes, the program is being severely
hampered by a lack of resources, officials across the state say.
The state crime lab has a backlog of more than a quarter-million DNA
samples it is unable to process because of a funding shortfall and a lack
of manpower, directors acknowledge. At its current rate, the lab would
need 2 1/2 years to clear the backlog - if it received no more samples.
But that is unlikely because it is taking in about 20,000 samples a month,
officials said.
State officials, Los Angeles police officers and the director of a rape
treatment center in Santa Monica say the backlog means that crimes are
going unsolved and that criminals who could be arrested may still be
walking the streets.
"There will come a time when we will be sitting on a case where we have
the offender profile and we are waiting for a match in [the database] who
is among the 300,000 unprocessed samples and this offender will strike
again," said Tim Marcia, a veteran detective in the LAPD's cold-case unit
who has used DNA to solve rapes and murders.
The problems stem from overly optimistic funding projections when
California voters in November 2004 resoundingly passed Proposition 69,
designed to make the state the nation's leader in the use of DNA
technology as a crime-solving tool.
Proposition 69 requires all convicted felons, certain misdemeanor
offenders and those arrested for rape or murder to give up DNA samples.
Prison officials swab offenders' mouths with an object called a buccal
which looks like a tongue depressor. The samples are subjected to genetic
testing, and the results are uploaded into the FBI laboratory's Combined
DNA Index System, known as CODIS. DNA evidence from crime scenes can be
run against the database for matches that will help identify suspects.
More than 285,000 DNA samples have been added to the database, and the
program has yielded 2,670 "hits" in some long-languishing cases. But
despite those successes, the funding problems have resulted in a backlog
of more than 287,000 unprocessed DNA samples.
"Proposition 69 is the gold standard model for the world, but full and
robust implementation is currently hamstrung," said Bruce Harrington, the
Newport Beach home developer who financed the ballot measure in 2004 and
continues to "hope that DNA will help solve the 1980 murder of my brother
Keith and his wife, Patty."
Harrington said the primary reason for the backlog is that the state crime
lab in Richmond, under its union contracts, pays dramatically lower
salaries than local crime labs, making it difficult to hire young
scientists and hang onto more experienced ones.
Lance Gima, director of forensic services for the state attorney general,
said the starting salary at the Richmond lab is $3,100, compared with
$4,600 a month at the Los Angeles Police Department laboratory and $4,200
a month at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. Labs in large
Northern California cities also pay more than the state, Gima said.
Although the program was supposed to pay for itself, it has not been fully
funded. Under the law, the counties were to turn over $1 of every $10 in
misdemeanor fines to a "penalty pot," amassing an estimated $25 million a
year for the project. Instead, for reasons that are unclear, not all the
counties are contributing, and the penalty pot stands at only $7.5
million.
A new state law allocates another $1 for each additional $10 in fines.
Harrington and Gima called that a positive step but said it will not
ensure that the fines are collected and the money sent to the state.
The problem will probably get worse in 2009, when officials, as part of
Proposition 69, will start taking samples from all persons arrested on any
felony, not just those convicted of felonies. In 2004, the latest year for
which figures were available, there were 522,781 felony arrests in
California.
For Gail Abarbanel, director of the Rape Treatment Center at Santa
Monica-UCLA Medical Center, the program has been a source of both
exhilaration - some rape cases have been solved rapidly - and enormous
frustration.
"We have the law, the technology and the voice of the public behind Prop.
69, but we also have a lot of valuable DNA evidence waiting to be
processed," Abarbanel said. Consequently, she said, the program has not
come close to fulfilling its potential to "put California in the forefront
of utilizing the science of DNA to enhance public safety."
Abarbanel said she leaves her office many nights with "a feeling of dread"
that a rapist whose unprocessed DNA sample is sitting on a warehouse shelf
in Richmond will strike again.
Prominent criminal defense lawyers also are alarmed by the program's
failings.
"It is a loss for prosecutors who want to expeditiously solve crimes
before the perpetrators can commit more acts of violence and a loss for
innocent suspects who do not want to be wrongly arrested and prosecuted,"
said Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project at Benjamin
Cardozo Law School in New York, which has used DNA evidence to exonerate
more than 180 wrongly convicted people over the last 15 years.
Currently, the state lab, in a modest office park, has 34 unfilled jobs.
At the same time, it faces an onslaught of new work. Before the passage of
Proposition 69, Gima said, the lab processed about 40,000 samples a year
from serious and violent felons. Then the deluge began.
"We expected 117,000 samples in the 1st year," Gima said. But 150,000
samples came in. "We expected 237,000 samples in the 2nd year. We received
284,000 samples."
Gima complimented state corrections officials for efficiently collecting
samples. But the Richmond lab simply has been unable to keep up - even
with many staffers working overtime and weekends.
"We are very proud of what we have accomplished but we are not happy with
that backlog," Gima said.
The new law provides that if the state lab is unable to process a sample
within 6 months, it should be sent to a private lab.
So far, the state has sent 166,000 samples to three private labs. However,
the state lab has to verify every DNA profile the private lab processes,
adding to its workload. Earlier this year, the state had to stop sending
out samples because it couldn't pay the private labs, Gima said.
"DNA testing has really outstanding potential in terms of not only helping
the police to investigate crimes and also exonerate people who are
innocent. But there are a lot of gaps to get DNA where it needs to go,"
said Barry Fisher, longtime director of the Los Angeles County sheriff's
crime laboratory.
Fisher said it was shocking that the program has not been adequately
funded, given its potential to solve cases and to prevent crimes by
identifying perpetrators before they strike again. "Why don't we give the
people the tools to get the job done?"
Greg Thompson, director of the San Diego County sheriff's crime lab, said
some people in law enforcement are aware of the problem but few have
spoken out about it. He said it was regrettable "that there was not some
mandate" that local officials collect the fines and pass part of them on
to the state. "I have been telling people, 'You have to understand this is
not a self-executing law.' "
Still, he emphasized that despite the problems, "we are getting
substantially more hits than we did before."
Before the passage of Proposition 69, Thompson said, his department was
getting about two hits - DNA matches to crime scenes, including
burglaries, rapes and murders - a year from the database. "Now we get two
a week," Thompson said.
Veteran Los Angeles Police Det. Veda Young, who used the database to find
a suspect in a Southeast Los Angeles rape in mid-July, also applauded the
program. The suspect, who was in the database because of a drug
conviction, was arrested and has been ordered to stand trial, she said.
"The fact that it happened as soon as it did was just wonderful," said
Young, who emphasized that speed is particularly important in rape cases.
When rape investigations drag out, "you tend to lose victims in the
process."
**
DNA backlog
As of Aug. 31, California had not processed about a third of the DNA
samples taken from felons for a national database.
818,232: Total samples collected
530,938: Samples processed
287,294: Backlog
14,165: Crime scene DNA samples checked against database
2,670: Matches (18.8% success rate)
[source: Bureau of Forensic Services of the California Department of
Justice]
*******************
Schwarzenegger Names New Corrections Chief----James Tilton, who had been
acting secretary, faces overcrowding, deteriorating inmate medical care
and a high recidivism rate.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, struggling to find an answer to the ongoing
woes inside the state prison system, named a new corrections chief
Wednesday the man who since this spring has run the department.
Schwarzenegger said he was handing the reins of the massive Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation to James Tilton, a 3-decade veteran of
state government who has been acting secretary since April.
Tilton, 57, will earn $220,000 a year, making him one of the state's
highest-paid employees. His predecessor, Roderick Q. Hickman, earned
$131,412 a year when he stepped down in February.
The governor offered no explanation for the dramatic, nearly 70%, raise,
but noted in a statement that "California's correctional system is at a
crisis point."
Schwarzenegger said Tilton would "deliver cost-effective solutions to
relieve the dangerous overcrowding in our state prisons, as well as
prepare inmates so they do not re-offend when they return to our
communities."
Tilton was unavailable for comment.
As corrections secretary, he occupies what is probably the most
challenging job in state government.
He oversees a department with a budget of more than $8 billion, 58,000
employees and 33 adult prisons holding roughly 172,000 inmates. He is also
responsible for the state's 3,000 juvenile prisoners, as well as more than
110,000 parolees.
In recent years, the state prisons have been beset by problems that
include overcrowding, a deteriorating inmate medical care system and a
recidivism rate that is the nation's highest, with more than half of all
parolees returning to prison within several years.
The job is also complicated by the role the federal courts have come to
play. This year, a federal receiver was put in charge of the healthcare
system for inmates and a special master oversees mental health care in
prisons under the supervision of a federal judge.
And then there is the 30,000-member prison guards union that has
exceptional clout in Sacramento.
The union, the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., is deadlocked
in negotiations with the Schwarzenegger administration over a contract to
replace one that expired in July.
When he was appointed acting secretary earlier this year, Tilton said his
tenure would be temporary, while the administration conducted a nationwide
search for a permanent chief.
His top priority, he said then, was to "put the department's fiscal house
in order" and "assemble a management team to turn the department around."
Since then, he has brought in top assistants and recently said he relished
the opportunity to revive a correctional system that has been widely
maligned by legislators, judges and other critics.
Before his appointment, Tilton served as a program budget manager for the
Department of Finance, overseeing corrections, consumer services and other
areas. In the 1980s and '90s, he was deputy director of administrative
services in corrections, responsible for peace officer selection,
personnel, training, budget matters and environmental health and safety.
(source for both: Los Angeles Times)