Kym Worthy 2020. She has my vote. Amazing story.
Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
181–190 of 219 posts
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#182> 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 sam…
And yet, somehow, black people get killed by police a lot more than poor white people.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
Austin has plenty of poor people, and the white population is somewhat under 50 percent - 47 according to recent estimates. Hispanic population is about 36%. Keep in mind Austin is the core downtown city, and if you’re thinking of affluence and whiteness, you might be thinking of the suburbs. It’s possible that economically disadvantaged nonwhite people maybe disproportionately represented among rape victims, also th…
Austin is a mostly suburban city. Just look at the map.
That's kind of how texas works though
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wayne County != Detroit, Detroit might be 80% black, but Wayne County according to what I've read is 40.5% black.
The difference is very stark. Check it out at the Dot Project (turn on the overlay in the lower left). https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html That line between green and blue between Warren and Detroit is 8 Mile Road, and yes the split between the south and north sides really is that stark. Wayne County extends west to Livonia and Plymouth, which is a white, affluent, low-crime area. And south through a…
Looking where I live on that map is disturbing. There are two jails near me and they are practically 100% green. :(
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not quite this dire, there are very competent public prosecutors and defenders. The problem is we accept the wealthy can obtain better and more lawyers, and effectively buy more or better justice as they define it. It's a classist system where justice is treated as a product rather than exclusively as a right.
Justice doesn't just come in form of public defenders. I lived in Chicago and had my car improperly towed to the yards. Being a rich computer dork, I could take the time off when the yards were open to go retrieve it. It was only PoC for the entire 3 hours it took me to pay the fine and get my vehicle back, during the day, when anyone with a job would be required to pick up their vehicle. My job says OK when I tell t…
It probably isn't true that most people would be fired for having to take a half day off to retrieve an impounded car.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#186> 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,…
This is a good case of how two important ideas are being conflated to the detriment of the larger lesson to be learned, I think. As far as I can tell, Prosecutor Worthy is making two arguments: (1) Black (assume PoC approx. equals black in this context) rape victims are treated differently than white ones. She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people (compared to ~40% of the popu…
[deleted]
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#187Earlier 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?
Here's one where an armrest of a chair was swabbed at the police station.
https://www.policeone.com/legal/articles/8691418-How-surrept...
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#188Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good case of how two important ideas are being conflated to the detriment of the larger lesson to be learned, I think. As far as I can tell, Prosecutor Worthy is making two arguments: (1) Black (assume PoC approx. equals black in this context) rape victims are treated differently than white ones. She bases this on the fact that 86% of unsolved victim cases are from black people (compared to ~40% of the popu…
Just to expand, even if it does turn out to be a race-based correlation (like we controlled for class, and the discrepancy was still present), we still don't know why. One version is that a bunch of essentially similar cases come in, then the cases for white people are prioritized over the cases for PoC, because of racism. And therefore they get solved at a disproportionate rate. That's one potential explanation, tha…
a race-based correlation (like we controlled for class, and the discrepancy was still present)
Racism runs deep, doesn't it?
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#189Having these kits evaluated and the DNA indexed is certainly valuable. Multiple kits revealing the same person is definitely valuable information for law enforcement.
But something this article ignores is that the DNA collected for a rape kit does not prove that a rape occurred. It proves that sexual intercourse occurred. In some cases, there will be evidence of physical injuries for a rape kit. The accusation, the nature of the evidence in the rape kit, other evidence, the likely credibility of the victim to the jury, etc. all need to be evaluated by the police and prosecutors in deciding whether to continue to pursue a case.
This part of the article really gets it wrong:
>Q: If you arrest someone for homicide, let's say the wrong person gets arrested, no one tries to convince the people there wasn't a homicide.
A: Right.
Q: They might say it was the wrong guy, or we can't find the person who did it, but no one says there wasn't a murder.
Actually, people do argue that there wasn't a murder. Not every killing is a murder, if it is in self-defense for example. Interestingly, I think the person being interviewed realizes this is not a very good argument, so they more or less ignore the reporter on this point. But the reporter is clearly not looking at this story critically.
Re: Abandoned rape kits identify over 800 serial rapists in one Michigan county
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 sam…
And yet, somehow, black people get killed by police a lot more than poor white people.
It may be due to race, it's just not a foregone conclusion.