San Francisco Cops Are Running Rape Victims' DNA Through Criminal Databases Because What Even The Fuck
from the converting-rape-victims-to-grist-for-the-jail-mill dept
There are things people expect the government to do. And then there are the things the government actually does. The government assumes many people are comfortable with things it does that are technically legal, but certainly not how the average government user expects the system to behave.
Some of this can be seen in the Third Party Doctrine, which says people who knowingly share information with third parties also willingly share it with the government. But very few citizens are actually cool with this extended sharing, no matter what the Supreme Court-created doctrine says. This tension between people's actual expectations and the government's portrayal of the people's expectations is finally being addressed by the nation's top court. Recent rulings have shifted the balance back towards actual reasonable expectations of privacy, but there's still a whole lot of work to be done.
So, when rape victims report sexual assaults to law enforcement, they certainly don't expect their DNA samples will be run through crime databases to see if these victims of crimes have committed any crimes. But that's exactly what the San Francisco PD has been doing, according to this report from Megan Cassidy of the San Francisco Chronicle.
The San Francisco police crime lab has been entering sexual assault victims’ DNA profiles in a database used to identify suspects in crimes, District Attorney Chesa Boudin said Monday, an allegation that raises legal and ethical questions regarding the privacy rights of victims.
Boudin said his office was made aware of the purported practice last week, after a woman’s DNA collected years ago as part of a rape exam was used to link her to a recent property crime.
Shocking to the conscience, as the courts say? You'd better believe it. No one reporting a crime expects to be investigated for a different crime. And there are already enough logistical and psychological barriers standing between rape victims and justice. Knowing their rape kit might be processed in hopes of finding the accuser guilty of other crimes isn't going to encourage more victims to step forward.
On top of that, it might be illegal. California has pretty robust protections for crime victims. The state has a "Victims' Bill of Rights" that guarantees several things to those reporting crimes. Nothing explicitly forbids police from running victim DNA through crime lab databases, but this clause directly addresses the outcome of successful searches, which would result in publicly available records as police move forward with arresting and prosecuting the crime victim for crimes they allegedly committed.
To prevent the disclosure of confidential information or records to the defendant, the defendant’s attorney, or any other person acting on behalf of the defendant, which could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family or which disclose confidential communications made in the course of medical or counseling treatment, or which are otherwise privileged or confidential by law.
Prosecuting a crime creates plenty of paperwork and arrest records are public records. A defendant could easily access records about their accuser -- records that wouldn't have existed without the assistance of this completely extraneous search.
Fortunately, this revelation has prompted an internal investigation by the SFPD. Unfortunately, an internal investigation is also the easiest way to bury incriminating documents, stiff-arm outsiders seeking information, stonewall requests from city officials for more information, and, most importantly, find some way to clear anyone involved of wrongdoing.
SFPD police chief Bill Scott at least has the presence of mind to comprehend the problem this practice poses.
Scott said, “We must never create disincentives for crime victims to cooperate with police, and if it’s true that DNA collected from a rape or sexual assault victim has been used by SFPD to identify and apprehend that person as a suspect in another crime, I’m committed to ending the practice.”
Good. And: whatever. Don't be "committed" to "ending the practice." Just fucking do it. You're the police chief. There's no reason you can't issue a mandate immediately forbidding running DNA searches on rape victims. I'm no expert on police protocol, but it seems like a memo beginning with "EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY" would end the practice, um, immediately and inform future violators of the potential consequences of their action. A wishy-washy "commitment" that's accompanied by no action tells the rank-and-file they're free to do whatever until the internal investigation is completed and its results handed over to city officials. Waiting until the facts are in (and thoroughly massaged) is a blank check for months or years of abuse.
And this sort of thing may not be an anomaly localized entirely within the SFPD. Other law enforcement agencies may be doing the same thing. The only difference is the SFPD was the first to successfully hit the middle of the Venn diagram containing rape victims and alleged criminals. Any other agency doing the same shady searching should probably knock it the fuck off. While it may seem like good police work to run searches on any DNA samples willingly handed to them, the optics -- if nothing else -- should be all the deterrent they need, especially when it comes to victims of sexual assault who are already treated with something approaching disdain by far too many law enforcement officers.
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Filed Under: criminal database, dna, rape kits, rape victims, san francisco, sfpd
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during the BLM protests, I talked a lot with a right winger who I had thought was more left. Our conversations left BLM and moved into general policing issues. She was all in believing in the claims of rampant sex trafficking (specifically sex trafficking) across our borders.
Seeing an opportunity, I pointed out that organizations fighting sex trafficking face a serious issue - legally the victims of sex trafficking are themselves criminals for the rapes the faced. This prevents victims from reporting their crimes out of the very real fear of facing criminal prosecution. Some cases have even seen traffickers never even get arrested, while their victims are convicted for the crime of being raped.
This issue is so bad the state of CA passed a law preventing the police from arresting sex workers (including those being raped under the guise of sex work) who report more serious crimes they are a victim of that require the victim to disclose their sex worker status in 2019. I pointed out that if we actually prosecuted sex traffickers, instead of their victims, we might see less sex trafficking.
Not entirely Surprisingly, my ex-friend wasn't concerned that we let traffickers go free to focus on arresting rape victims who confessed they were raped for profit. Because rape victims aren't people under the law and order lens. They are violent criminals, because otherwise they would have let themselves be killed like the real people they have to step on.
We've all said it before. To the police, the question isn't if you are guilty, it is what are you guilty of. And to hell with building a rapport with the community, lets just outlaw doors and crime will magically be solved.
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Somehow they keep finding new lows to reach
Just when you think the police literally could not find a way to sink even lower and show how vile they can be they somehow manage it...
How utterly monstrous do you have to be to have someone report being raped and have your first thought be 'I should run their DNA though the criminal database to see if I can arrest them while they're here'?
Forget 'looking into it' and 'committing to ending the practice' the scum involved need to be very publicly raked over the coals and fired because anything less is just going to reinforce the idea that the police are never to be trusted and leave victims out in the cold as they will rightly suspect that reporting anything to the police, even something as horrible as a rape, will just be exploited by the police for their own gain.
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This incident points to a broader general problem. The DANA was not just compared against that in the database, but added to the database. So the question someone should be asking with great urgency, how many DNA samples collected to eliminate someone from enquiries have also been added to the database? What about other opportunities to gather DNA, such as blood from accident victims, has that been used to expand the database?
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Re:
All of them, son.
All of them.
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Re:
See the USA Today article I linked below.
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All'yall should know this by now...
The function of the Police is to present prosecutable cases to their local DA's.
There are officers that want to help people & prevent crime and all that kinda fuzzy feel good stuff, but that is 100% subordinate to building & presenting cases to the DA to prosecute, at the Law Enforcement Officer's (LEO) discretion.
Anytime anyone interfaces with an LEO in any way they may be implicated in a crime & prosecuted for that crime.
If you feel we don't live in a police state you are living in a dream world, wake TF up.
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Re: All'yall should know this by now...
Alledgedly Rape/domestic violence victims cant be jailed as material witnesess BECAUSE a woman in Lousiana, a DV victim, was jailed for a week as a material witness without being served a subpoena ever and was thrown out a week later after her abuser took a plea deal and she was never called to testify.
Never Subopenaed
Jailed: Ie: Stripped searched, allegedly physically abused by guards, AS a WITNESS
Then: Never called to testify.
Prosecutors want wins, not justice, not truth
The system itself is predatory
Woman's last name with Singleton, google it. It happened.
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If they were smart...
If they had been smart they could have just found her name, and then used good old fashioned police work to try and link her to it without the DNA.
I wouldn't even call that fruit from a poisoned tree. Just don't use the DNA at all, but a parallel investigation.
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Re: If they were smarter Slave patrols
I rented an office here to Margaret Prescod & the Global Women's Strike for 15 years, for the cost of their electricity.
For 20 years, women died near this street, LAPD would write "NHI" on the death reports.. No Human Involved.
See http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/07/08/grim.sleeper.profile/index.html In the top video Margaret (with years of testimony at the UN, et. al.) rips the mike away from the Chief of Police.
https://laist.com/news/criminal-justice/lapd-zero-in-on-final-48-potential victims:
On December 16, 2010, the LAPD released 180 photos of women, found in Franklin's home
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Someone might want to check 49 other states real quick.
So we've gone from rape kits being ignored & left to mold in warehouses to now they run them so they can have a larger pool of data to check for other crimes.
Well we never got around to finding your rapist, but we know you stole this garden gnome... into the paddy wagon with you.
Something something rapes could be solved if all LEOs had to give samples?
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Eve worse...
Imagine how wrong stop and frisk is.
Now imagine if the only people being stopped and frisked were rape victims.
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Along the same lines...
Rape victims have been required to unlock their phones and let police examine them without supervision even when the phone contained no information related to the charge.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/06/victory-indiana-supreme-court-rules-police-cant-force- smartphone-user-unlock-her
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rape-police-mobile-phones-labour-b19 49170.html
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San Francisco, where cops believe you must be a criminal if you've been raped. Maybe it's time to start running police DNA through those systems...
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Missing the point
You missed the entire point of the problem in the article. DNA from rape victims was going into a database. It's not that they were then looking to see if the victim had committed other crimes... it was that years later, the database entry provided identification evidence in a new crime.
the solution is not to "...issue a mandate immediately forbidding running DNA searches on rape victims." The solution is to stop adding victims' DNA to a general database. And now, to review and delete 10 or 20 years of data entry for any DNA added because it was a victim's.
But then, this goes back to the "should every arrestee provide DNA" debate. If fingerprints were new tech today, should every arrestee have their fingerprints on file, even if not later convicted?
It would be as if photos of assault victims (to document injuries) got added to the mug shot book shown to witnesses and now are there forevermore.
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Omission
You left out there was only one case "discovered" and it hasn't even been confirmed yet. It was noted her DNA sample could have come from a separate database used correctly.
However, it was very convenient of Chesa Boudin to put out a press conference so quickly. He is up for recall barely 2 years into his first term for his abysmal failure as a DA.
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Re: Omission found between the ears
Boudin? You need to sit in the criminal courts on and off for a decade, or at least watch 'Roman J. Israel, Esq'. 2017. The new SF County, and the new LA County DA are nothing but little trim tabs on the rudder of injustice in these two counties. For perspective, the economy of California is larger than the economy of Putin's Russia, with a similar level of "let's make a deal" justice.
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Re: Re: Omission found between the ears
Gibberish comment.
I have worked for the city for 22 years. I've also worked with production of record/subpoenas for the DAs officer for the last 5 years. I am very familiar.
He was a public defender prior to being elected as the DA. For the first time in over 30 years a DA in progressive SF, who ran on a "victims first" platform, is up for recall. The latter tells you all you need to know about his actions.
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When this was first reported, I assumed that the DA absolutely knew about this practice, and probably even came up with the idea. So I had to know a little more about this scumbag, and it turns out that he's not entirely a scumbag, and probably didn't actually know. Turns out the cops all have hurt feewings because he's prosecuting a couple of violent cops, and they don't like it.
And then I came across this: https://
www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/6854467001
Wow, sounds about as disgusting as it gets, and that's not the DA I'm referring to
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