The New York City medical examiner's office, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr., along with the Obama administration all stood in unison Thursday to announce the White House's $79 million effort to speed testing of sexual assault evidence kits in 27 states, according to MSN.
The federal government will kick in $41 million in grants while New York will provide $38 million to clear a backlog of untested kits.
"When we solve these cases, we get rapists off the streets," Vice President Biden said in a statement. "The grants we're announcing today to reduce the national rape kit backlog will bring that sense of closure and safety to victims while improving community safety."
"We have finally come together to solve one of our law enforcement community's biggest embarrassments which is having treated sexual victims, particularly women, not as seriously as we have treated other kinds of crimes and victims," said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, who earmarked $38 million in forfeiture funds toward the cause, according to NBC News.
Vice President Biden and "Law and Order" actress Mariska Hargitay, who's Joyful Heart Foundation has supported the cause for years, according to NBC New York, toured the New York crime lab before giving Thursday's speeches.
Documents show over 70,000 neglected evidence kits backlogged by over one thousand police agencies are only the tip of the iceberg of the nation's 18,000 departments, which logically attest to a considerably higher number of untested kits, guessed in the hundreds of thousands.
