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SALT LAKE CITY — The Salt Lake City Police Department is ready to open its doors to be evaluated on how its officers handle sexual assault cases.
Following up on a promise he made in August, Chief Chris Burbank on Friday announced that an agreement with the nonprofit Police Executive Research Forum to conduct a three-year examination and evaluation of how the department handles those types of cases, its practices and policies, has been finalized.
"This is a warts-and-all process to evaluate what we've been doing and make systemic changes based on critical analysis and best evidence," Burbank said.
Three other agencies in the United States, that have yet to be named, will also be part of the study. At the end of 36 months, the research forum, which is working with the federal Office on Violence Against Women, will offer its conclusions from the report entitled: "Defining Success in Responding to Sexual Violence: Establishing Performance Measures and Quality Assurance Standards for Law Enforcement Agencies to Improve the Reporting and Investigation of Sexual Assault" to hopefully improve sexual assault investigations across the nation.
The partnership comes on the heels of controversy over untested rape kits within the Salt Lake department. Earlier this year, the Salt Lake City Council questioned the chief about more than 750 unprocessed kits — containing DNA and other evidence collected by medical professionals when they treat people who have been sexually assaulted — and why four out of five kits collected between 2003 and 2011 had been shelved or destroyed.
This will not only be a very sterile study conducted from the outside, but it will also be a study conducted from the inside with people participating with the detectives and having insight into the crimes.
–Chief Chris Burbank
Burbank took time Friday to clarify some misconceptions about those figures. He said in some cases, a sample of a suspect's DNA was already on file and the suspect was already known to detectives.
"Nobody has ever been told, 'We don't have the money to process something that needs to be processed to solve a serial crime to prevent a serious rapist from being on the street again,'" he said.
Burbank added that DNA evidence is only one piece of solving a crime. Very few cases can be prosecuted on DNA evidence alone, he said, noting that good detective work includes gathering other pieces of information vital for putting a case together.
Furthermore, he said his department has to look at all of its criminal cases as a whole when prioritizing them, not just those cases from the sex crimes unit.
"This is a limited resource. There is nobody in the nation, including the FBI, that has unlimited resources to process everything that exists. So we are constantly going to have to evaluate, no matter what the lab looks like, as to what is appropriate to be tested because it does have consequence to other cases and everything else being submitted," he said.
Burbank said he has had discussions with the mayor about the city building its own DNA lab. He also noted that a DNA lab within the new Public Safety Building was included in the first bond proposal in 2007 that was rejected by voters. A second bond that was $67 million less and cut out items such as the DNA lab was approved in 2009.
As for the three-year evaluation into how his department investigates sexual assaults, Burbank said Salt Lake City wasn't chosen because there was a perception of major problems within the unit.
"I do not believe we have a major problem," the chief said. "I, in fact, think we do things better in Salt Lake than many other agencies. I would dare say they're going to look from a very holistic approach. Because the idea behind this is a best practices situation."
If there are problems that need to be addressed immediately, Burbank said his office won't have to wait for the end of three years to find out.
"This will not only be a very sterile study conducted from the outside, but it will also be a study conducted from the inside with people participating with the detectives and having insight into the crimes. It's not a matter of just looking at data, but actually participating with officers and detectives as they investigate these things," he said.
