Giving Sex Crimes Investigators the Tools They Need

In few areas of policing is time more important than in the investigation of sex crimes. Any hesitation can mean a change of heart by traumatized victims, the compromise of valuable DNA evidence or the failure to identify a rapist or child molester who may strike again.

But too often at the Los Angeles Police Department, precious hours slipped by as detectives waited -- and waited -- for the necessary tools to secure, gather and process crime scene evidence.

Police Lt. Felicia Hall recalled a particularly frustrating incident last December involving a South Los Angeles man suspected of inappropriately touching and photographing two young girls.

Lacking items available at any store -- from disposable rubber gloves and crime scene markers to cotton swabs and cameras -- detectives had to defer to the department’s forensic specialists.

Trouble was, the criminalists -- specialists from the crime laboratory -- showed up hours later, police officials said.

Detectives, meanwhile, learned of four other possible victims in the case but could not begin tracking them down until crime scene evidence was secured and criminalists were present.

“It delayed everything,” said Hall, who supervises the South Bureau’s Sexual Assault Investigation Team. “It meant waiting to locate and interview victims and waiting to locate and interview the suspect. It tied up patrol units.”

There were 1,117 rapes in the city of Los Angeles last year and scores of other categories of sex crimes, which are not counted as part of the general crime statistics.

Because of the large number of rape cases, criminalists cannot respond to all of them. Often physical evidence was collected as the victim was being treated at a hospital or rape treatment facility.

Like teachers forced to purchase supplies for their own students, LAPD sex crimes detectives were footing the bill for homemade evidence processing kits. Hall acknowledged that they were made up of “the bare necessities.”

That’s when it dawned on Hall. As a former homicide detective, she and her colleagues had tools -- from shovels to rope to night lights -- in the trunks of their cars.

Why not, she asked, create kits tailored specifically to the needs of sex crimes detectives?

Enter Gail Abarbanel, director of the nonprofit Rape Treatment Center of Santa Monica, which has been pushing local law enforcement officials to put DNA evidence front and center in efforts to catch rapists and sex offenders.

Working with Hall, and through a donation from board members, the LAPD and the rape treatment center put together items sex crimes investigators need most.

The new crime scene kits were unveiled earlier this month in Century City at a daylong conference for LAPD detectives on investigating and solving sex crimes.

Costing $1,800 each, the kits have been assigned to 38 sets of sex crimes detectives. They contain 50 items designed to collect and preserve all potential sources of DNA evidence, such as human hairs, bodily fluids and fingerprints.

Michele Kestler, assistant commanding officer for the LAPD’s Scientific Investigation Division, said criminalists have gathered evidence on an ad hoc basis for years. But now detectives will have an organized and complete protocol for locating and collecting evidence.

“The new policy is to get detectives to more crime scenes than they were able to in the past,” said Kestler. “These kits enable them to collect routine physical evidence.”

To prevent crime scene contamination, kits include disposable gowns, masks and gloves, as well as goggles and biohazard bags. Among the most important items are a blue light source to detect the presence of bodily fluids and a digital camera to document evidence.

“Forensic photography is powerful and persuasive in court,” Abarbanel said. “It’s really the way to take the jury in a sensory way back to the crime, to re-create the reality of the crime and what the victim experienced. It makes it more real.”

But taking juries back to the scene is only a part of the challenge, she said. Rape and sexual assault are crimes of violence, often claiming multiple victims. In that sense, physical evidence can make a huge difference.

“With rape, so much of the case rides on testimony, so it’s a significant breakthrough when we can use physical evidence to support that testimony,” Abarbanel said.

In an age when technology can turn the tide in a criminal case, law enforcement officials say, the new kits will help exploit that advantage.

“Evidence is on the victim, the evidence is on the suspect and the evidence is at the scene, and they all must be coordinated in an investigation,” Hall said. “As time goes on, the evidence in all these areas could be tampered with or literally diminish.”