Task force hindered by rape kit response

Atask force is facing some challenges figuring out how many rape kits are stored in Oklahoma police departments and sheriff’s offices and haven’t been tested for DNA. This is disappointing but, sadly, not all that surprising.

Gov. Mary Fallin created the task force last April after a proposal to do the same thing failed to muster enough support in the Legislature. The Senate approved a bill requiring the audit of rape kits, but it wasn’t heard in a House committee.

The hope in creating the task force was that knowing the number of kits that haven’t been processed after DNA evidence has been collected would lead to discussions about steps going forward. The task force also was asked to research and pursue grants to be used to help agencies pay for testing of the kits.

Yet getting over the first hurdle has been trying. Fallin initially set a deadline of Dec. 30 for law enforcement to provide their totals. In mid-January, the governor said about 40 percent of sheriff’s offices and more than half of municipal police departments had not responded.

So, Fallin set a new deadline of Feb. 15. As of March 1, The Oklahoman’s Darla Slipke reported Monday, 144 of 419 agencies — roughly one in three — had still failed to provide their totals.

Danielle Tudor, a rape survivor and task force member who led the push to tally the untested kits, was understandably disappointed by the response. “For over 100 agencies in this state to send a message that it does not matter is unacceptable,” she said.

That it is. But again, we would have been surprised if the response had been terrific. A task force’s effort to figure out how many jobs in Oklahoma require licensing provides an example.

The task force, led by state Labor Secretary Melissa McLawhorn Houston, spent months working on the issue and still didn’t have a clear idea of how many licenses are offered or the requirements for each one. Why? In part because many agencies were unhelpful.

In its final report, the task force noted that when the governor conducted a survey of regulatory agencies through her Cabinet secretaries, “many agencies were not very responsive.” Additional requests for licensing data were part of a Budget Works Program for agency budgets, but task force members were “disappointed with the quality and quantity of the data that was received.”

The Office of Management and Enterprise Services eventually had to contact independently every board or commission that manages occupational licenses. Sometimes, the task force said, OMES was given far more than was requested, and other times agencies were “either not being forthcoming with information, or only reporting partial components of requested data.”

The task force asked Fallin to order agencies, boards and commissions to fully report their licensing requirements. Good luck with that.

One rape kit task force member who was generally pleased with the response said many of the law enforcement agencies that hadn’t reported were smaller, and might not have any untested kits. If so, how difficult is it to pick up the phone and let someone know that?

The ultimate goal here is to help rape victims. Oklahoma’s law enforcement should do all they can to advance that goal.