At least two of Pennsylvania’s major public crime labs are making swift progress toward testing their backlogged rape kits, since Auditor General Eugene DePasquale’s last report in September.
Philadelphia reports that more than 900 kits have been outsourced for testing in the past year. In early 2016, Philadelphia OFS reported that it had nearly 1,300 backlogged kits. Now the office is verifying the results, uploading them into the federal DNA database and notifying detectives of database hits, which could lead to arrests.
In western Pennsylvania, the Allegheny County Office of the Medical Examiner has outsourced about 250 kits it received from its submitting municipalities, which includes the City of Pittsburgh.
In early 2016, the office reported that it had 132 kits awaiting testing; others have come in during the year and have been sent out for processing.