SFPD withheld rape-kit reports for a decade, Standard finds

San Francisco police sat on a 2016 transparency mandate for about a decade before rape-kit reporting finally surfaced, leaving survivors and City Hall without a public way to see whether sexual assault evidence was being processed. In a city where rape-kit data can show whether cases are moving or stalling, the delay turned a reporting obligation into a long breach of trust.

On April 20, 2016, the San Francisco Police Commission unanimously passed Police Commission Resolution No. 16-28. SFPD said in an April 22, 2016 post that the resolution required semi-annual and annual reporting on the department’s collection and analysis of sexual assault kit evidence and reporting of results to sexual assault survivors. The department described the resolution as a joint commitment by the department and the commission to invest in the issue.

SFPD’s later reporting pages now list semi-annual Sexual Assault Evidence Kit reports for July 1-Dec. 31, 2020, Jan. 1-June 30, 2024, and July 1-Dec. 31, 2025. Those reports matter because they are one of the few public windows into whether kits are being tracked, tested and reflected back to survivors. When that information is withheld, residents, lawmakers and advocates lose the ability to see bottlenecks or compare performance year to year.

The problem sits inside a larger crisis around rape investigations in San Francisco. SFPD cleared 14% of rape cases last year, about half the national rate. Kits were tested quickly, then cases were quietly shelved. The Standard’s separate reporting said fewer investigators, more reliance on victims and a stalled pipeline to prosecutors were among the main takeaways from the department’s case crisis.

Trust had already been shaken in other ways. In 2022, ABC7 News reported that SFPD was investigating claims that DNA from a rape kit had been used to help identify a sexual-assault victim as a suspect in another crime, a move advocates warned could discourage survivors from coming forward.

San Francisco’s situation also mirrors a national backlog that has dragged on for years. USAFacts reported in 2023 that at least 25,000 untested rape kits were sitting in law enforcement agencies and crime labs across the United States in 2022, based on data from 30 states and Washington, D.C. The federal government had spent more than $1.3 billion to clear the backlog since 2011, a sign of how persistent the problem has been even as California’s Department of Justice maintained sexual assault kit and evidence FAQs.

What still does not explain itself is why a clear public-reporting mandate sat for so long before San Francisco’s police records were brought into view.