SAN FRANCISCO — A woman has filed a lawsuit in federal court against San Francisco over a practice that allowed the police to use evidence gathered from her rape kit to arrest her for an unrelated crime five years later.
An investigation began in February into the practice of using DNA collected from sexual assault victims to identify them as suspects in other crimes after the district attorney’s office discovered the practice in place, as we reported at the time.
The woman who filed the lawsuit, identified only as Jane Doe to protect her identity because she was the victim of a sex crime, was tied to a burglary in late 2021 using DNA collected from a rape kit collected as part of a domestic violence and sexual assault case in 2016, The Associated Press reported.
“The exchange is you’re going to use this DNA for a specific purpose, which is to prosecute the person who violated me,” Adante Pointer, Jane Doe’s attorney, told The New York Times. “And instead, the police turned into the violators here.”
Federal law already bars the inclusion of a victim’s DNA in the national Combined DNA Index System, the AP reported. However, no state-level law in California exists to bar local law enforcement agencies from accessing victims’ profiles and searching them.
The Board of Supervisors in San Francisco approved an ordinance that forbids using victim DNA from rape kits to identify suspects in unrelated crimes, The New York Times reported.
Jane Doe v. San Francisco by National Content Desk on Scribd
San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said at a police commission meeting in March that he had found 17 victim profiles, 11 from rape kits, that were matched as possible suspects using a crime victims database during unrelated investigations, the AP reported. Scott said he believed Jane Doe was the only woman arrested.
In a statement to The New York Times, the San Francisco Police Department said it does not comment on pending lawsuits.
The lawsuit is requesting damages for lost income and wages and medical expenses, as well as punitive damages and prohibiting the City and County of San Francisco from providing law enforcement access to victims’ DNA without consent from the victims.
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