The announcement of the grant follows a news conference in Tampa where Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi pledged to eliminate the backlog of thousands of untested kits statewide. Florida isn’t the only state with this problem as other departments have been exposed for not testing the kits by The Joyful Heart Foundation, a national organization with the goal of eliminating the national backlog.
The foundation requested the number of untested kits across the country at numerous sheriff’s offices and police departments and found at that time Jacksonville had nearly 2,000 untested kits.
The Sheriff’s Office has submitted about 40 to 50 of the untested kits each month to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to have the DNA evidence entered into a law-enforcement database.
The Sheriff’s Office said in June that it planned to test every kit, although that hadn’t always been the case.
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