Don't read into this what's not there. To be fair...Blacks are the majority population in Memphis.
Now majority-black, the city of
Memphis is home to more than four hundred thousand African Americans, making it one of the largest population centers of this ethnic group. At least eight other municipalities have African-American majorities: Bolivar, Brownsville, Gallaway, Gates, Henning, Mason, Stanton, Whiteville.
The problem with the backlog of testing DNA is all over the country, not a matter of discrimination, laziness or not caring.
- Crime lab resources. Public crime labs throughout the country have struggled to maintain sufficient funding and personnel in recent years, as technology has advanced and the demand for DNA testing has grown. In addition to rape kit evidence, crime labs may receive DNA samples from hundreds, or even thousands, of crime scenes each year. As a result, many labs have exceedingly long turnaround times—sometimes years—for testing DNA evidence, including rape kits.
- Police resources. Law enforcement agencies often lack the technology to track untested rape kits, as well as the personnel needed to ship or transport untested kits to a crime lab in a timely manner. Many also lack the staffing resources necessary to investigate or follow up on leads that arise from rape kit testing.
ETA The reason this case moved so quickly is they had a crime scene to work with. People already looking for Eliza, a kidnapping on video, smashed cell phone, perps shoes. The wisdom has always been you have a much better shot of
resolving a case early on. Obviously they didn't have a rape kit to test.