Feds investigate rape-kit neglect
Rape kits that should have been analyzed by the NYPD but were left in storage at hospitals across the city are now part of a sprawling Department of Justice probe into the Special Victims Division, The Post has learned.
The revelation comes three weeks after The Post revealed the snafu, which meant an unknown number of cases were not fully investigated, victims didn’t get justice, and countless rapists could be roaming free.
“The Department of Justice is looking at it,” a police source said, adding that a “large number” of the kits weren’t picked up by Special Victims Division detectives and taken for analysis at the NYPD’s lab in Queens.
The Post reported exclusively Dec. 3 that the forensic kits — which contain semen, saliva and other evidence from reported rapes — were found gathering dust at some of the 60 hospitals that conduct rape-victim exams in the city.
The NYPD still hasn’t revealed how many of the kits were found as hospital employees cataloged storage areas to comply with a new state law requiring old kits be sent to an upstate facility.
“The hospitals were calling us saying, ‘What do you want to do?’ ” the source said. “We don’t have a count.”
After learning of the bungled rape kits, the NYPD assigned Special Victims Division detectives to regularly call city hospitals to ensure the evidence was being collected.
Nicholas Biase, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, declined to comment when asked if the probe was looking at the rape-kit debacle.
The abandoned evidence could have helped catch serial rapists with modern-day technology like DNA cloning, which is used in cases where there isn’t enough evidence to find a match at the time of the crime. Investigators also have access to databases where the evidence could be matched to out-of-state cases.