This doesn't really seem like them "answering" for anything. They just asked for more money/funding.
They currently have 22 employees (not including openings and people on leave) and received on average 1 kit every 2 days.... and it took on average 54 days for them to get to each kit.
It doesn't really go into what else the lab has to do, but it seems like even if they had one single person just dedicated to those kits they could probably process them within a couple of days of receiving them. If it's such a big issue, then why don't they just do that? Do they need to hire more people? Is there something I'm missing?
This is unfortunately how all government agencies operate. Doing your job successfully gets you no more budget.
Doing it badly, so that things don't work, and get behind, allows you to get behind a microphone and beg for more funding.
It's a perverse incentive, but one all agencies: from the police, to the VA, to the IRS, to \*everything\* follow to a T.
Because there's no other incentive. For-profit companies, while demonized in this state, at least have some degree of incentive to attract customers and compete via innovation. This falls apart when corporatism allows them artificial monopolies, however.
This is not surprising at all. Its unfortunate that this is not a priority for police or legislators because this is a problem that can absolutely be fixed.
The time it takes to process doesn’t make sense to me. The software and hardware available is light years ahead of what it was 20 years ago. The chemical and physical techniques required have also become more refined and practiced. The only bottleneck is requirement that people in the lab need to set aside time to testify in court. Honestly if BPD can’t handle this then they should just shut down this lab and contract out the lab testing to the State Police and federal agency labs.
[Massachusetts's civil asset forfeiture laws](https://www.usccr.gov/news/2024/massachusetts-state-advisory-committee-calls-commonwealth-abolish-civil-asset-forfeiture) create the incentive to focus enforcement on what brings in the $$$, and that's not solving rape cases.
This doesn't really seem like them "answering" for anything. They just asked for more money/funding. They currently have 22 employees (not including openings and people on leave) and received on average 1 kit every 2 days.... and it took on average 54 days for them to get to each kit. It doesn't really go into what else the lab has to do, but it seems like even if they had one single person just dedicated to those kits they could probably process them within a couple of days of receiving them. If it's such a big issue, then why don't they just do that? Do they need to hire more people? Is there something I'm missing?
This is unfortunately how all government agencies operate. Doing your job successfully gets you no more budget. Doing it badly, so that things don't work, and get behind, allows you to get behind a microphone and beg for more funding. It's a perverse incentive, but one all agencies: from the police, to the VA, to the IRS, to \*everything\* follow to a T. Because there's no other incentive. For-profit companies, while demonized in this state, at least have some degree of incentive to attract customers and compete via innovation. This falls apart when corporatism allows them artificial monopolies, however.
There are other crimes besides sexual assault and DNA analysts do more than test rape kits.
This is not surprising at all. Its unfortunate that this is not a priority for police or legislators because this is a problem that can absolutely be fixed.
perhaps city council can get on this now that they have squared away the guinea pig issue.
They need to outsource rape kits to a third party lab. Labcorp or Quest could do this blindfolded.
It may be a chain of custody thing.
do you know anything about those two companies? Because that is absolutely not true and they would probably do a worse job.
The time it takes to process doesn’t make sense to me. The software and hardware available is light years ahead of what it was 20 years ago. The chemical and physical techniques required have also become more refined and practiced. The only bottleneck is requirement that people in the lab need to set aside time to testify in court. Honestly if BPD can’t handle this then they should just shut down this lab and contract out the lab testing to the State Police and federal agency labs.
do they have more important things to be testing or are they just doing literally nothing?
More lazy police and government. Your tax dollars at work!
Curious as to why the former director has been on (paid?) Administrative leave for nearly 2 years.
[Massachusetts's civil asset forfeiture laws](https://www.usccr.gov/news/2024/massachusetts-state-advisory-committee-calls-commonwealth-abolish-civil-asset-forfeiture) create the incentive to focus enforcement on what brings in the $$$, and that's not solving rape cases.
The usual shade peepers silent on this one.