Officials say the San Francisco Police Department is no longer using DNA from sexual assault survivors and other victims to investigate unrelated crimes.
The revelation that the San Francisco police crime lab used a sexual assault victim’s DNA against her in an unrelated property crime case prompted a national outcryThe San Francisco Police Department is no longer using DNA from sexual assault survivors and other victims to investigate unrelated crimes, officials said Wednesday.
The department's crime lab stopped the practice shortly after receiving a complaint from the District Attorney's Office and formally changed its operating procedure Friday, Matt Dorsey, spokesman for San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott, said Wednesday. District Attorney Chesa Boudin said last week he became aware of the “opaque practice” after prosecutors found a report among hundreds of pages of evidence in the case against a woman recently charged with a felony property crime. The papers referred to a DNA sample collected from the woman during a 2016 rape investigation.
On Tuesday, U.S. Congressman Adam Schiff, D-California, wrote a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray asking him to investigate “deeply concerning” reports that DNA samples of sexual assault victims had been searched against crime scene DNA samples. Schiff also asked Wray whether there are ways to prevent victim DNA from being uploaded to the FBI’s Combined DNA Index System — or CODIS.
“Though there are still many unanswered questions about the extent of this practice, the fact it may have occurred at all is deeply disturbing. I fear it will have a chilling effect on sexual assault reporting,” Schiff wrote.
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