Akron City Council will decide tonight whether to pursue a $1 million federal grant so police can process a backlog of sexual assault cold cases.
In 2012, Akron sent 鈥� some dating from the mid-1990s. Close to half of the kits came back with a match to someone in the .
Thousands of cases and one detective
But the city has just one detective trying to work through the cold cases linked to those rape kits. Detective Bertina King has been with the department since 1991, and has applied for the federal grant to form a team including three investigators. She says that even though there may be a DNA match in many of the old cases, there still has to be an investigation.
鈥淛ust like we would do if we had a rape today: Put together a photo array [and] see if the victim can identify them. Or it could be someone the victim actually had sex with consensually back then.鈥�
In those cases, King says a DNA kit would likely not have been sent in the past for comparison to the FBI database. But now, she says all kits are sent to see if there could be a match with another, unrelated case.
Evolving police work
King says some aspects of police work have changed since the 1990s, including understanding the way victims remember details.
鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to show the officers that it鈥檚 never going to be 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. You鈥檙e going to have to go back and talk to them [and] just see what they鈥檙e able to remember. And you鈥檒l be surprised just asking people, 鈥榃hat are you able to remember?鈥� instead of the 鈥榳ho, when, why and how鈥檚' -- that鈥檚 what we want people to get away from when they鈥檙e dealing with the victims.鈥�
King says the cases without matches to the national DNA database could still be pursued using other evidence, such as clothing or linens.
Copyright 2021 WKSU. To see more, visit . 9(MDA5NTM4MTIyMDE0MTg3NDc2MTVlZjdmNQ001))
