MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Memphis police have opened a new $1 million sexual assault evidence storage facility.
The climate-controlled facility in Frayser can hold about 50,400 evidence kits. The space includes a DNA storage room, four freezers, two work stations, a crime scene investigation evidence room and office space for four staffers. It opened earlier this month, The Commercial Appeal reported (http://bit.ly/1RGwv1x).
“The kits stored here are more than just inanimate objects,” Mayor A C Wharton said. “These kits represent a traumatized and victimized person. As such, they must be handled with the utmost care.”
Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong says the state-of-the-art facility will aid in completing evidence-sensitive investigations.
The kits are being shipped to labs at a rate of 300 a month, and all should be undergoing analysis in about 12 months, said Doug McGowan, head of the city’s rape kit task force.
The city has grappled with a backlog of more than 12,000 sexual assault kits that went untested since the 1980s.
The most recent numbers on the effort to test the city’s rape kits show 5,355 or 43 percent have been analyzed, 2,787 or 23 percent are at a laboratory awaiting analysis and 4,232 or 34 percent still need analysis.
Plans for the storage area began forming in 2013 following the Memphis City Council’s approval of funding for the facility.
Wharton said confidence will not be rebuilt “simply because you build a physical facility.”
“It’s up to us to keep working, not merely in building facilities but rebuilding the trust and being as transparent as we possibly can,” Wharton said.