Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine announced a milestone today regarding a big part of the thousands of forgotten rape-investigation kits.
When DeWine took office in 2011, he started the effort to test the thousands of rape kits languishing on police department shelves across the state. He says of the nearly 14,000 submitted, some more than two decades old, all of those from Cuyahoga County have now been tested.
“That consists of 4,996 kits from 40 Cuyahoga County departments. Eighty-eight percent of Cuyahoga County’s kits were from just one agency and that’s the Cleveland Police Department, which submitted more kits to us than any other agency in the state.”
The Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office says these kits have resulted in 233 convictions with many more expected. About 85 percent of all the kits from across Ohio have been tested. DeWine’s effort spurred a state law requiring all new kits to be processed within 30 days.
