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Published on Monday, October 06, 2008
By LA Daily News Staff Writer
A Los Angeles city panel Monday approved preliminary funds to help the Los Angeles Police Department clear a backlog of more than 7,300 murder and rape cases in which DNA has been collected but not analyzed.
The City Council's Public Safety Committee recommended approving $700,000 to hire 16 criminalists and support staffers to analyze the criminal evidence.
"There is no doubt in my mind that there are rapists on the streets whose DNA is sitting in a refrigerator in an LAPD garage and that is simply intolerable," said Councilman Jack Weiss, chairman of the committee.
Weiss, a candidate for city attorney next year who has made the DNA backlog one of his top issues, said his goal is to eliminate the 10-year backlog of cases so the LAPD can process sexual-assault and homicide cases as they occur.
"We want to get to the point where we don't need a cold case unit at all," Weiss said.
Funding for the new positions will come from within the LAPD's existing budget, officials said
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