By Khadean Coombs
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writer
Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski announced Monday that the Baltimore County Police Department has been awarded a $300,000 grant to help solve sexual assault cold cases.
The money would pay to staff and train special victims personnel responsible for managing sexual assault investigations; testing microscope slides with evidence from previous sexual assault victims maintained by the Greater Baltimore Medical Center; applying modern DNA analysis procedures on cases that have been entered into the FBI indexing system; and testing SAFE kits from before April 30, Olszewski said.
“We are committed to do whatever we can to bring justice to survivors of sexual assault,” Olszewski said during a press conference, which was also attended by Police Chief Melissa Hyatt and Lt. Brian Edwards. “Today we’re taking another important step to show that commitment.”
The grant, which was awarded by the Hackerman Foundation of Baltimore, will go before the County Council next month.
This is Olszewski’s latest move to help improve sexual assault investigations in the county. In February, Olszewski formed the Sexual Assault Investigations Task Force to examine sexual assault investigation’s procedures and policies.
The seven-member task force issued a report earlier this month with 23 recommendations. Among them, the task force recommended that the county implement a comprehensive policy to govern all sexual assault cases, develop a uniform centralizes records system for cases, and increasing the staff of the police department’s special victim’s unit.
Olszewski said the grant gives the task force “the opportunity to close some cases and bring perpetrators to justice” and “to get closure for victims who have waited years or even longer.”
The county executive said that “every resident” should know that every resource will be at their disposal to solve past, present and future cases. However, Olszewski acknowledged that “only a small percent” of existing rape kits and GMBC slides would be tested.
In the 1970s, a GBMC emergency room physician, Dr. Rudiger Breitenecker, preserved evidence of sexual assault victims on microscope slides. The slides were kept at GBMC. Since the 1990s when the standardized SAFE exam emerged, law enforcement have used the slides to convict several offenders.
Nancy Heckerman, who is associated with the Heckerman Foundation, provided the task force with the grant after asking state Del. Shelly Hettleman, D-Baltimore County, how can she help?
“Nancy Heckerman asked me, ‘Is there anything I can do to help?’” Hettleman said. “She’s an activist. She reads about what’s happening in this world and is aware of problems, but more importantly she asked what she can do to help. So, I said let me think about it a bit … I had some ideas and brought it to some of the folks you see here today, and we developed this plan.”