20 Years of Impact: Investigation into Rape Kit Mismanagement Pushed Change at SDPD 

For years, the San Diego Police Department allowed thousands of sexual assault kits to sit on evidence room shelves. Police leaders decided to investigate cases first and determine whether the kit would be useful evidence later.  

As the backlog piled up, a nationwide movement to “test all kits” pressured SDPD to act. In June 2017, the City Council allocated $500,000 to the department to test backlogged kits. Victims’ rights groups and the city attorney also pushed for testing. 

But as former Voice of San Diego reporter Andrew Keatts discovered in 2019, SDPD lowered its testing standards to get through the backlogged kits more quickly. Rape kits usually contain multiple DNA swabs from a victim’s body that might be used to help locate a suspect. SDPD officials decided not to test all of the swabs to get through their backlog.  

Backlash was swift. District Attorney Summer Stephan blasted the police department for testing standards that fell below those of most other departments. 

Under normal procedure, police tested six swabs from a victim’s body. But in multiple cases Keatts reported on, analysts just tested one. In many cases, the one swab did not connect the victim and her alleged rapist, and other swabs included in the rape kits were not tested. Officials marked those kits as completed and moved on. 

Supervisors told analysts to just test one swab so they could “check a box,” Keatts reported. 

One day after Keatts asked about rape kits from which only one swab was tested, officials reversed course and mandated testing of six swabs in all cases.  

In honor of Voice of San Diego’s 20th anniversary, we’re looking back at the stories we broke that had a tremendous impact on San Diego. Read more here.

Even more shakeups followed: A week after Keatts’ story, the police chief announced that all old rape kits would be sent to a third-party lab for testing.  

Department leaders also brought in someone else to lead the crime lab, and the previous lab manager left the department.   

Weeks after his first story, Keatts also revealed the police department relaxed their standards in other ways, which resulted in fewer profiles being uploaded to the federal database CODIS. That meant fewer cross-references that could have identified new suspects.  

Police officials long had argued that testing all rape kits wasn’t a useful practice.  

But the department’s own testing results seemed to contradict that argument, as Keatts and former freelancer Kelly Davis found out. Between late 2017 and November 2018, the department screened over 300 backlogged kits – 121 yielded a viable DNA profile on federal databases and a handful of those matched to a hit in the database, generating possible leads.  

This came into even sharper focus in 2021. It turned out – perhaps unsurprisingly – that all those untested rape kits that had been sitting idle started returning hits after police sent them to a third-party testing company.  

Out of 396 kits, 128 contained a DNA profile that met the legal standards to be added into other law enforcement databases, Keatts discovered. Without Voice’s reporting, those kits might never have generated leads under the department’s previous lax standards.  

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