SAKI Unit add law enforcement

While we are encouraged by our progress as a SAKI Unit, our continual work has also revealed several key areas where additional support is greatly needed. There are three significant issues Fulton County has identified. First, our primary law enforcement partner, the Atlanta Police Department, is not currently supported as a part of the Fulton County SAKI project. As the primary agency on the majority of our cases, we need their support and partnership to be formally a part of our SAKI site. Second, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), the state crime lab, has identified approximately 2136 additional partially tested kits that may have received a “test” but due to time demands, the GBI cannot complete further testing.  These kits date back to the 1980s and of those kits, GBI is certain 1,846 of those kits belong to Fulton County. Of the 1,846 kits, over 1,400 of them have been identified as originating with the Atlanta Police Department. Third, our newly hired data analyst is currently in a 12 month contract position and we need his position funded for the length of SAKI funding. Our objectives and activities are to fully investigate Atlanta Police Department cases with two APD detectives; test 1846 Fulton partially tested kits, specifically funding 1541 of those kits to be tested through private labs; and ensure ViCAP compliance and efficient database management through hiring our current 12-month contractor as a full-time data analyst. With the deliverables of evaluation reports, we will easily track our progress. Violent crime in Fulton County, the largest county in the state of Georgia with a population of more than a million residents (1,075,472), continues to rise. Fulton County is 534 square miles, with 15 municipalities, poverty over 20% in 80 census tracts, and its largest city, Atlanta, is the capital of Georgia, where rape, aggravated assaults and shootings are all up double-digit percentages.