Grants approved for sex assault kit testing

LANSING (AP) — The state police and Flint Police Department will receive grants to help reduce backlogs of untested sexual assault kits.

Nearly $2 million will go to the state police to test more than 3,600 kits. Flint gets $163,000 to test 246 kits.

The funding is part of combined $79 million pledged last Thursday by a New York district attorney’s office initiative and the U.S. Justice Department to cut into backlogs across the country.

Michigan’s state police are overseeing the testing of more than 11,000 kits found in 2009 in a Detroit police storage facility. Officials recently announced that more than 10,000 of the kits have been tested.

Groups are helping raise $10 million from private donors and nonprofit organizations to test the remaining kits and conduct criminal investigations and prosecutions.