Tulsa Police can soon start working on its backlog of untested rape kits.
A $1.5 million Department of Justice grant awarded in September is now coming in, and city officials are working on adding it to the department's budget. TPD will be able to test around 750 kits as a result.
Special Victims Unit Sgt. Jillian Phippen said they have roughly 3,000 kits in storage, most of which have not been sent through DNA analysis for a reason.
"Most of those, we can tell you that reason because we did do that audit; however, nationally, the big push is they should all be tested. And to a point, we do agree with that, and that’s why we needed the funding, to be able to look at the big picture of why that wasn’t happening with our department," Phippen said.
Besides testing kits, the grant will help pay for a full-time sexual assault kit investigator, a victim advocate and an outreach campaign with the help of partners like Domestic Violence Intervention Services.
"So, it’s working collaboratively with our community partners — DVIS and the Family Safety Center, Mental Health Association, some of our partners in the downtown community with our homeless population, because we do have a large portion of that community that are victims of sexual assault, unfortunately," Phippen said.
Phippen said TPD is very good at catching the bad guys in these cases.
"But on the back side of that, there’s a lot of follow up that you need to do to support these victims. And so, we just didn’t have the funding to do that, and this grant is going to allow us to do that," Phippen said.
Phippen said it’s likely the three-year grant will be renewed.
