Archives of the Mayor's Press Office

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2000

Release #371-00

 
Contact: Sunny Mindel/Julie Caudell 212/788-2958
  DCPI 212/374-6700


MAYOR GIULIANI AND POLICE COMMISSIONER KERIK
ANNOUNCE AWARDING OF DNA ANALYSIS CONTRACTS

Sexual Offense Evidence Collection (SOEC) kits to be analyzed and
DNA profiles entered into local, state and federal databases

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik today announced that the City has awarded contracts to three laboratories to perform DNA analysis on the backlog of SOEC kits currently being held as evidence by the Police Department Property Clerk. The kits contain biological evidence collected by and medical personnel during physical examinations of rape victims following the crimes. The City has awarded contracts to Bode Technology Group of Springfield, VA; Genescreen, Inc. of Dallas, TX; and Cellmark Diagnostics, Inc. of Germantown, MD. A total of $12 million dollars over the next three years has been allocated by the Mayor to complete this project.

New York City is the first jurisdiction in the country to award contracts to analyze a large backlog of rape kits. The backlog of untested SOEC kits is a national problem, with more than 180,000 SOEC kits untested nationwide. In New York, the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner performs more DNA analyses than any other public lab in the country, and the City is currently planning a new state of the art DNA laboratory that will vastly expand the City's capacity to perform DNA analysis. The new contracts will allow the City to obtain DNA analysis in cases that had not been tested because of limited technology in the past.

Joining the Mayor and the Police Commissioner were Criminal Justice Coordinator Steven Fishner, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau; Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson; Staten Island Chief Assistant District Attorney David Lehr; OCME Director of Forensic Biology Robert Shaler, Ph.D.; Linda Fairstein, Chief of the Sex Crimes Unit, Manhattan District Attorney's Office; Harriet Lissel, Executive Director, NYC Alliance Against Sexual Assault; and Gordon Campbell, CEO of Safe Horizon.

"The DNA evidence gathered in this process will bolster the resources of law enforcement agencies all over the country as they continue to utilize advanced scientific technology to track down and convict criminals," said Mayor Giuliani. "Since could not identify a suspect in these 16,000 cases, the kits were not analyzed for DNA content. The victims of these crimes deserve closure and now, with the advanced technology that is available, the liklihood of identifying suspects and pursuing convictions has increased dramatically."

"With these contracts, the NYPD steps once again to the forefront of the law enforcement community with DNA analysis and databanking," said Commissioner Kerik. "By tapping into the wealth of information contained in our crime scene evidence backlog -- something no other law enforcement agency or municipality has undertaken in this magnitude before -- the NYPD will take a huge step forward in its efforts to fully realize the crime fighting potential of DNA technology. "

"DNA testing ranks at the top of major technological advances for law enforcement," said Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau. "It has the potential to provide definitive proof - to convict the guilty or exonerate the innocent - in a wide variety of cases, including homicides, sex crimes and property crime offenses. However, to make full use of this powerful technology, we must have the resources to gather and test DNA evidence and then compare and evaluate the test results. It is significant that the Mayor has committed City resources for these purposes."

"We have been plagued by far too many pattern rapists in recent years, and this effort represents a significant investment in making our city safer for women," said Bronx DA Robert Johnson. "I'm sure that testing this backlog of rape evidence will enable us to identify and prosecute a number of suspects who, thus far, have managed to elude justice."

"As an organization that embraces new methods and technologies to prevent victimization, Safe Horizon appreciates the potential of DNA technology to bring more perpetrators of murder, rape and sexual assault to justice, as well as to exonerate those wrongfully accused and convicted," said Gordon Campbell, CEO of Safe Horizon. "Through our work with survivors of sexual assault, we know the effects that a violent rape can have on the life of a victim. The collection of DNA evidence at an emergency room gives victims hope that the perpetrator will be brought to justice. That hope fades when rape kits are not promptly analyzed. With today's announcement, the Mayor restores hope to victims and gives meaning to the process."

Since January 1, 1999, all SOEC kits have been analyzed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME). Previously, kits were only analyzed when there was a known suspect in the case. The City currently has a backlog of approximately 16,000 kits which were collected as evidence prior to January 1, 1999. Under the new contracts, each lab is expected to test between 3,810 and 4,000 rape kits over the course of twenty-six months, for a total of approximately 12,000 cases. The NYPD expects to extend the contracts to test the remainder of the backlog after the first 12,000 cases are analyzed.

DNA profile data generated by the vendors will be forwarded to OCME for entry into its databank. That profile information will then be uploaded into the State and Federal databanks as well. These DNA profiles will remain in the databanks permanently, so that they can be compared to other profiles and used to identify criminals. The New York State Databank, which was created in 1994, contains DNA profiles from convicted offenders, from unsolved cases, and from missing persons. State law was amended in 1999 to require offenders convicted of violent felonies, felony sex crimes, felony drug sales, and grand larceny to provide DNA samples for inclusion in the databank. Currently, there are more than 13,000 DNA profiles in the state databank. The State has collected more than 50,000 offender samples since the 1999 change in the law, and it is adding them to the databank at a rate of 2,000 a month. It is expected that by the end of 2001, there will be more than 100,000 DNA profiles in the State databank.

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