Actual source article:
https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/...
The boingboing article just excerpts part of it, and inaccurately summarizes some of the rest, so it's worth skipping to the original source.
Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
31–40 of 219 posts
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the county that contains Detroit, once the largest city in the US. And still quite large, despite the attrition.
> Detroit, once the largest city in the US Not even close. At its peak, in 1950, it had 1.6M to New York's 7.8M. BTW Wikipedia has various "Demographic history of" pages to satisfy your curiosity.
It was 5th with 1.8 million people, and was 4th in the 20s, 30s, and 40s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities_in_the_...
Perhaps you could use Wikipedia to satisfy your curiosity
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#33How can this even happen? How can you misplace 11k rape kits in a way that doesn't disrupt trust in the chain of custody? Does DNA evidence degrade after some time? Are there juristical time limits?
Also imagine you're now happily married to some guy for 10 years and suddenly the police comes knocking. Can't protect yourself against stuff like that. Slow procecution is just all around bad for the society.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#34My god, how do you leave over 11k crimes just sitting in a store room... in one county. I'm glad they're addressing this gross miscarriage of justice. Hope it's an isolated thing (but not actually expecting it to be so)
> My god, how do you leave over 11k crimes just sitting in a store room...
Because if the police had a choice, they wouldn't have collected the evidence in the first place, so when the law required them to collect the evidence and didn't require them to do anything with it, the results were predictable; that's why the newer law sets timelines for testing.
> Hope it's an isolated thing (but not actually expecting it to be so)
It's not, there's lots of stories about untested rape kits nationally, most of which don't have the “we finally tested them and convicted some rapists” silver lining.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#35> 86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differentl…
FYI the Demographics of the city of Detroit is roughly 86% black, to put it in perspective, it's not out of the statistical norm of the city's population
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#36>Over 800 serial rapists, criminals who have struck 10-15 times without being stopped, were identified. 127 convictions have been made this far. The definition of serial rapist is 10+ victims. That's a lot of them in one county. o_O
Insane. I'm definitely not a tough on crime kind of person, but these are people who are unfit to live in society. There should be no rehabilitation for these people. I hate to say it, but lock them up and throw away the key.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#37Assuming they started right away, that's one prosecution every 23 days or so. That's a pretty impressive pace for a single prosecutor and her assistants.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#38Why don't women go to the police more often when they're raped? Sure is a mystery.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#39> You're not going to find too many blond-haired, blue eyed white women ... Because their kits are treated differently, their cases are solved. That's just the way it is in this country. If you're a person of color, if you're a different economic class, then your case across the board, across the board, not just sexual assault — they're treated differently. And that's just the truth. People may not want to admit it, but I've seen it throughout my career and I know it's true ... It's just true. ... Race is at the center of this in many ways as well, unfortunately, we know that across the criminal justice system. ...
:/
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#40Can any news from Detroit be presented now without giving story a racial twist. I clicked the link expecting get details of what had happened and found a person giving me a moral lecture.