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Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

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Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are suspected of a crime in which DNA is relevant and set foot in a police station it's not unheard of for them to ask you if you'd like a water in case you drink from it and leave the bottle in the trash.

Is there any documented case of this?

I watch a lot of true stories about how crimes are solved and this does happen though not a lot.

Sometimes police tail a suspect and wait until they leave their DNA somewhere, like if they drop a cigarette butt on the ground or if they throw a drink cup away.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#52
post #14

> 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

Wayne County is only 40% and this goes back as far as '84 when Detroit City was less than 75%

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#53

Can 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.

>86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. Calling it a "racial twist" sounds completely disingenuous to me. There is obviously a strong racial component here. Why do you think it's a problem to point that out?

Not when 82% of the population are African American.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#54

>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.

Based on your statements here it doesn’t seem like you hate to say it. Why should there be no rehabilitation for this crime? If it is possible to fix these thoroughly broken people, why not do it?

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#55

Can 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.

>86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. Calling it a "racial twist" sounds completely disingenuous to me. There is obviously a strong racial component here. Why do you think it's a problem to point that out?

Because Detroit was less than 8% white non-Hispanic in the 2010 census? Honestly sounds like white women are overrepresented in this sample.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#56

Can 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.

>86% of our victims in these untested kits are people of color. Calling it a "racial twist" sounds completely disingenuous to me. There is obviously a strong racial component here. Why do you think it's a problem to point that out?

No, the demographics of the city are similar. So, no racial component to the victims. For the suspects or judicial system, perhaps.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#57
post #38

Why don't women go to the police more often when they're raped? Sure is a mystery.

It becomes a legal proceeding. Like any legal proceeding, your trauma now has to be relived over the course of a criminal trial, with you having to go up on a stand and recount the entire experience and be called a liar in a public forum by opposing counsel and have all your neighbors (and the world) know more about you than you'd like and fashion all manner of horrible opinions of you. Nobody wants to go through tha…

I think the OP was being sarcastic.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#58
post #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,…

While I understand the sentiment is a common one, I disagree with the premise that these things are due to race.

This is due to economic inequality, with race being used by the wealthy as a tool to pit the majority against each other, no different from how religion was used to label the pious and heathens. It's binary nonsense.

There are parts of the country where you WILL find poor white people being treated the same. I grew up in one; rich construction company owners kids get busted for growing pot, are let off the hook by the judge who throws the book at poor white kids living in the trailer park doing the same.

The trailer park kids were doing to support the family cause they couldn't find a job due prior felonies related to crimes undertaken to again feed the family.

And the judges speak to it with scary justifications like (paraphrasing a longwinded rant) "If God didn't want those kids in jail, he'd have given their family a construction company for them to manage some day."

White wives are beaten and abused daily. Cops do nothing. Wife maims husband, goes to prison.

The meme as I see it: The rich are given a pass, they are just following their manifest destiny. Poor people don't appear to have one, so fuck them.

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#59
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article does say they have gone on to arrest 127 people, so presumably they were also able to identify the perpetrator from the DNA (or the testimony of the victim).

Right, but that doesn't mean the other 670+ of the 800 serial rapists were identified against another database or way of identifying the individual besides “the same individual as indicated in these other rape kits”.

Quite possibly some of the rape kits also included files where the victim said “Joe did it” but wasn’t believed at the time. Now when Joe’s DNA is found in a bunch of other rape kits where the perpetrator was unidentified, the picture of our friend Joe gets a bit clearer...

Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county

#60
post #9
post #6

> but because it's sexual assault, for whatever reason, it's very easy for some folks to sweep this under the rug Wow. Just wow. I get that resources are limited and they must prioritize. But to view sexual assault as a low-priority item is just sick.

Definitely. I can see not prioritizing it over anything that could immediately kill someone, but it (and any other criminal evidence) ought to be the very next thing on the list. And they've got the resources to handle those things. Perhaps part of the problem is how they're compensated based on how many beds they have and how many procedures they're performing etc

We're talking about a place that struggles to have a functional response to murder and fire.
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