2014 FOIA Request
Why did we send the FOIA?
In 2014, the Joyful Heart Foundation launched The Accountability Project to uncover the extent of the backlog across the country. In 2015, Joyful Heart and our pro bono attorneys sent public records requests to twenty-six of the country’s most populous cities for which we did not have any or had very little information about their untested rape kits.
What did we discover?
Omaha has not fully responded to our November 2014 records request. As of August 2015, the Omaha Police Department (OPD) had 1,271 rape kits in custody that were collected between 2000 and 2014. OPD stated that “no record exists” regarding the testing status of these kits, and OPD took no additional measures to attempt to provide this information. As such, we were unable to ascertain the status of these 1,271 rape kits.
Why Accountability?
Right now, we do not know the full extent of the national rape kit backlog because few states require law enforcement agencies to count, track, or test rape kits. The Accountability Project aims to bring greater transparency and accountability to rape kit testing practices across the country.