Anthony Weiner: “it is remarkable that in DNA people see this issue through many different prisms, all of them positive. For those of us…”

“it is remarkable that in DNA people see this issue through many different prisms, all of them positive. For those of us in this Chamber who are concerned about law enforcement, DNA is truly a miracle. It is better than a fingerprint. It is better than a video tape. It is better than an eye witness. It is better than a lie detector. With DNA we can find out who did a crime, and as other speakers have spoken to here, we can also find out who did not do it. But the prism I look at this issue through was formed early in my congressional career. The prism I look at DNA through is a series of cardboard boxes all stacked in a refrigerated warehouse in Long Island City. That is where I found rape kits that were evidence for crime scenes, completely anonymous except for the numbers written on the side of these cardboard boxes, 16,000 of them in early 1999 when I was first elected, all collected at crime scenes in New York City, all that had not been analyzed, all that had not been processed, all representing a victim that was awaiting justice. That backlog is heartrending. That backlog does not represent a simple number on the box. That backlog represent an individual, an individual crime. And the mystery was that it was not being stored in that refrigerated warehouse because of any bureaucratic problem. It was not being stored there because of any legal loggerhead. It came down to one thing: money.…”