PORTLAND, Ore. — A federal grant could help the Portland Police Bureau make progress on a backlog of untested sexual assault kits that has more than doubled despite promises to eliminate it.
The Oregonian reported that the bureau had more than 1,000 untested kits in 2001, when a serial rapist killed 14-year-old Melissa Bittler on her way to school. Detectives tracked down her killer by testing some of the old kits, and police vowed not to let the stockpile gather more dust.
Despite those promises, police leaders never adopted any standard directing detectives when to test kits. Nor did top brass make sure supervisors regularly reviewed whether detectives were getting kits tested as part of their investigations — as two city audits urged.
Since Bittler’s death, fewer than 4 in 10 kits have been sent for testing, and in 2012 the rate was just 2 in 10.
Portland police now have more than twice as many untested kits — 2,408, nearly half of all untested rape kits statewide. The bureau expects to get at least 500 matches connecting evidence in the kits to DNA profiles of criminals or crime scenes stored in the national criminal justice DNA database when they’re tested.
Only recently did the bureau make any effort to change, The Oregonian said. A Sex Crimes Unit sergeant who had never investigated a rape case himself to wrote guidelines requiring that most kits be tested by a crime lab. The sergeant also pushed for a $2 million federal grant to process and track the kits — a request that was approved last week.
Chief Larry O’Dea, a 28-year Portland police veteran, said he didn’t realize the bureau had previously identified a problem in its handling of the kits. After he became chief in January, he found out about the glut and said he’s committed to having his detectives test all kits.
“Sexual assault investigations are some of the most emotional and complex cases we undertake,” he said in an email. “We are striving to be a leader in this country on the development of sound policy and investigative practices.”
Melissa Bittler’s parents, Tom and Mary Bittler, called the bureau’s failure to address the problem for so long upsetting.
“It’s disturbing because I remember – if Melissa’s death had to have some good in it, it was so other victims of rape would know their rapes would get priority and their rape kits would be tested,” Mary Bittler said.
“Did they not take rape seriously?” Tom Bittler asked. “Was it just giving us lip service?”
Detectives reviewed a decade of old police reports in a search for clues to Bittler’s killing. They found three rape cases from February 1997 similar to Bittler’s rape. The girls, then ages 14 or 15, had been approached from behind, grabbed around the neck and dragged behind a nearby house. They all survived, but didn’t know their attacker.
Two rape kits from those cases were located among the more than 1,000 others that had never been tested. The state lab crime lab reported back that it had found DNA linking Bittler’s rape to the ones in 1997, but the DNA didn’t match any suspect in the crime database.
Then another woman was raped four months after Bittler, and she knew her attacker: Ladon A. Stephens. The lab connected Stephens to Bittler’s attack and the other rapes. He was convicted and sentenced to life without parole in the teenager’s murder.
Jim Ferraris, who commanded the bureau’s Detective Division at the time, repeatedly said he was disturbed by the discovery of all the untested kits.
“Have we learned something from this? Absolutely,” he told The Oregonian in July 2002. Ferraris said the bureau had drafted a new policy requiring police to route all sexual assault kits to the state lab unless the case was unfounded or stretched beyond the statute of limitations, the kit had no evidentiary value or the evidence wasn’t needed.
In a recent interview, Ferraris said he believed he wrote a memo to the Detective Division or Sex Crimes Unit outlining the new standards. But in response to a public records request, the bureau said it couldn’t find any written protocol, memo or policy governing which kits to submit to the lab for testing.
Lt. Dave Meyer, who now oversees the Sex Crimes Unit, said he doesn’t know why previous supervisors didn’t deal with the growing pile of untested kits.
“Either somebody put policies in place and somehow they floated away, or they were never written,” he said.
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