LAPD clears decades-old backlog in rape cases but…

California - The Los Angeles Police Department announced today that it has cleared a decades-old backlog of untested DNA evidence collected in rape and sexual assault cases, but acknowledged the department’s laboratory remains too small to keep pace with the influx of new cases. The department came under intense pressure in late 2008 from victim advocate groups and elected officials to address the thousands of pieces of DNA evidence that had sat untouched in police storage freezers for years. Because its in-house lab is too small to handle the task, the departments says, it has spent the past two years scraping together federal grants, public funds and private donations to outsource the testing to private labs.  More…