The Missouri Attorney General’s Office released the report for the second inventory of kits across the state undertaken as part of the SAFE Kit (SAFE kit stands for Sexual Assault Forensic Exam kit) Initiative. The inventory, as required by the second Bureau of Justice Assistance grant, indexed untested kits collected between April 30, 2018, to April 16, 2020, as well as previously tested or partially tested kits collected from January 1, 1998, to the present. The Office also this morning helped ship 300 untested sexual assault kits from the Kansas City Police Department to the lab to be tested.
“One of my first actions as attorney general was to launch the SAFE Kit Initiative to clear the backlog of untested kits across the state of Missouri. Since then, thanks to the dedication and hard work of Judge M. Keithley Williams and her team, the SAFE Kit Initiative has made major strides in working towards that goal,” said Attorney General Schmitt. “My Office will continue to work to ensure that we honor the courage of victims who came forward to report these heinous crimes by bringing offenders out of the shadows and off of the streets.”
The full inventory report can be found at this link. The second round of grant funding obtained by the Attorney General’s Office through the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) required that a second inventory be undertaken to unlock more funding for shipping and testing kits. The Office recently completed that second inventory and can now use the funding to continue shipping and testing kits.
The inventory indexed 12,182 “in scope” kits from 599 law enforcement agencies and 126 health care providers. The breakdown of SAFE kits by type in law enforcement agencies is 1,408 untested, reported kits; 656 untested, unreported kits; 6,234 partially tested kits, and 3,643 fully tested kits. The breakdown of SAFE kit types in hospitals is 128 untested, reported kits and 113 untested, unreported kits. It is the Office’s policy and national policy that untested, unreported kits are not tested in order to respect the victim’s privacy. Current kits are being handled by the Missouri State Highway Patrol lab.
Using both the first BJA grant as well as funding from the state legislature, the Office has already tested 3,478 kits. Roughly 70% of all untested, reported kits identified in the first and second inventories have been shipped and tested. Further, 82.3% of Missouri law enforcement agencies report no SAFE Kit backlog.
As a result of eligible DNA results being uploaded into the Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), there have been 249 CODIS hits from the 2018 SAFE Kit Initiative inventory and there have been 5 CODIS hits from the 2020 SAFE Kit Initiative inventory. There has also been one conviction obtained because of a CODIS hit, and 4 more cases are awaiting trial because of CODIS hits.
Additionally, on Monday morning the office aided the Kansas City Police Department in gathering and shipping 300 kits to the lab to be tested. Those shipping numbers are not reflected in the inventory report, as the inventory report was finalized before this morning’s shipping event.
