TPD clears 50% of sexual assault exam backlog

TULSA, Okla. — The Tulsa Police Department has cleared 50% of its significant backlog in sexual assault investigations.

In 2017, nearly four thousand untested exams were identified.

As of November 2024, Lt. Darin Erhenrich of the TPD Special Victims Unit confirmed that he had tested nearly two thousand of them.

“We’ve found that by testing these kits, we’re identifying patterns of behavior, we’re solving other crimes, and it’s just a much better way of doing things,” Erhenrich said.

He explained that in the past, law enforcement agencies did not always handle the exams for one reason or another.

However, that changed in 2017 with an executive order issued by former Gov. Mary Fallin.

“Of the 2,000 kits we sent for testing, we identified DNA profiles in 345 of them that were eligible for entry into CODIS,” Erhenrich said. “Of the 345 profiles submitted to CODIS, we received 183 CODIS hits, so we identified many perpetrators through this work.”
In calendar year 2024 alone, SVU received 1,280 reports.

This, combined with an untested set, can keep this backlog in place.

Ehrenrich said that thanks to grants that began in 2018, he has been able to work with other labs across the state to speed up the pace of testing.

“We have had work done by a lab in Oklahoma City, and we recently signed a contract with another lab,” he said. “After years of testing, we found that our production capacity is approximately 150 sets per month.”

Lori Gonzalez of Domestic Violence Intervention Services has been working in this field for over 20 years. She said she has come to expect a backlog of sexual assault cases.

“We expect over 500 (exams) to be taken this year, and that’s just Tulsa and the surrounding areas,” she said. “If you consider the exams that have been held in Oklahoma City and other places across the state, it’s natural that this would happen, and we don’t have a lot of places that actually process these kits.”

Both Gonzalez and Ehrenrich say resources are responsible for multi-year backups.

However, Oklahoma has made major efforts to improve the process for survivors who are brave enough to come forward.

“Right now, the state is doing a lot of things to alleviate this problem, so one of the things they do is when someone comes in and gets a sexual assault kit, they get a number and they can track that kit and where it goes there is this set in the works,” Gonzalez said. “It looks like the case was passed on to the police, who passed it on to the lab, so people know what stage the case is at.”

While perpetrators don’t simply stop committing crimes when they fall behind, SVU is trying to get a handle on the problem.

“Let’s say the Bureau of Justice Assistance did not renew our grant this year, this state is involved. I am confident that we will find a funding source that will allow us to continue this work,” Ehrenrich said. “These works will not be left where they are now. We will catch up and make sure this doesn’t happen to anyone else in the future.”

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