Washington State’s Attorney General has submitted a $1.7 million budget request to establish a statewide Cold Case Unit, as well as revamp the state’s resource-depleted Homicide Information Tracking System.
To help with the approximately 1,600 unsolved homicide cases, as well as 1,774 unsolved sexual assault cases, Washington AG Bob Ferguson is proposing a budget that includes eight senior investigators, an assistant attorney general, a crime victim advocate, a violent crime analyst, a data consultant and a legal assistant.
Before 2015, Washington had one of the worst sexual assault kit backlogs with almost 10,000 kits untested. Since then, the state crime lab has tested nearly 3,000, resulting in 1,057 DNA profiles uploaded to CODIS. Of those, 395 matched known offenders, giving Washington a hit rate of about 13%. Projections from these numbers indicate the state will generate 900 additional CODIS hits once the backlog is cleared. These numbers are what drove Ferguson to ask for a state cold case team.
“This new evidence will generate a large volume of old cases in need of review and possible re-investigation by local law enforcement,” reads the budget request As submitted by the Office of the Attorney General (AGO). “The proposed AGO Cold Case Unit would act as a resource multiplier for local law enforcement agencies by leveraging state and federal law enforcement resources and providing victim-centered and trauma informed training, technical assistance, case reviews, forensic consultation, assistance with victim and witness interviews, data collection, intelligence gathering, crime analysis and overall investigative guidance.”
Before the budget request, Washington did its research.
In 2017, homicide investigators from the state formed a Cold Case Advisory Group to share information. Based on data and discussions, the group found that serial offenders generally commit crimes in multiple jurisdictions—in other words, they are highly mobile. This led the group and AGO to push for a statewide solution to address cold cases as offenders, whether intentionally or not, do not contain themselves within jurisdictional boundaries.
Then, in 2018, the AGO conducted a survey asking local law enforcement agencies about their cold case needs. Fifty-six law enforcement agencies indicated they would benefit from cold case assistance from the AGO, who has the resources and expertise, but not the funding.
While the establishment of the Cold Case Unit is a new request, part of Ferguson’s proposed budget is intended to restore 70% of the lost resources of the Homicide Information Tracking System (HITS). The Legislature created HITS in 1990 as a response to serial killers and the murder and rape of children by transient offenders. HITS collects data from homicides and sexual assaults and stores it in a searchable database to provide law enforcement a tool across different jurisdictions. However, HITS has been decimated by budget cuts over the years, bringing the staff of 16 down to only 5. The work of HITS Investigators requires frequent travel around the entire state, as well as extensive data entry.
Ferguson’s 2020 budget proposal would restore HITS staffing level to 11 full-time employees, which is about 70% of the staffing HITS had at it’s highest in 1999.
“This is a first-time request from the AGO that recognizes there is no acceptable reason to delay investigation of murders and sexual assaults,” reads the budget proposal. “The state should not ignore the coming volume of cold sexual assault cases that will be in need of re-investigation due to DNA analysis of previously untested sexual assault kits. Advances in forensic technology—particularly DNA analysis—make this a perfect time to fund an investigative unit within the AGO to assist in solving cold cases statewide. The alternative to this proposal is to maintain the status quo and allow cold cases to languish as cities and counties struggle to combat current crime at the expense of older unsolved cases.”