Thread by @DrRJKavanagh

So cable news has decided the reason Greg Abbott can't "eliminate rape" is cause there's a "backlog" of untested rape kits.

I mean can we just not pretend elimination is possible?

But also the idea of a "backlog" is wrong.@meaghan_ybos @heathermarlowe theappeal.org/five-ways-the-…

Police have the resources and budgets to investigate sex crimes. They choose not to make them a priority, and instead to arrest people for low level offenses like jumping the turnstile and trespass.

The "backlog" narrative is a convenient way for police to ask for more money.

For instance, in 2019, the NYPD had almost 40,000 police officers and the biggest budget of any police department in the US - at $6 billion.

Yet it had only 67 detectives assigned to its Special Victims Unit to investigate 5,661 sex crimes that year. theappeal.org/the-appeal-pod…

This is before we even get to police actually investigating sex crimes. Most rape and sexual assault cases are not dependent on DNA because the complainant and the person accused of sexual assault are known to each other and the defense is consent.

I'm not suggesting rape kits are not important - they are. But the idea that they are the be all and end all of a rape investigation is ridiculous.

The backlog narrative also conveniently excuses a failure by police to investigate all the other evidence that is part of a case.

I don't think I properly credited @meaghan_ybos and @heathermarlowe in this thread. I meant to in the very first tweet since they have been the trailblazers in destroying the backlog mythology.