Will Clarke eat crow over his department’s DNA failures?

Remember when the state’s DNA backlog first came to light?

At the time, Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke said of the situation, “This isn’t a mistake, this is an abomination. Let’s go ask the victims of unsolved sexual assaults or other crimes if they feel anybody needs to be held accountable.” I can’t help but wonder if Sheriff Clarke still thinks the situation is an abomination, now that it’s come to light that his own department failed to collect hundreds of DNA samples from convicted felons this year at the House of Correction, which is now known as the County Correctional Facility-South (emphasis mine):

“Yes, we had a backlog,” Clarke said.

That’s putting it mildly.

By his admission, department employees – deputies, corrections officers and civilians – failed to collect DNA at the correctional facility from April to August, a five-month stretch. That means about 350 convicted felons didn’t give samples to authorities, Clarke estimated. In addition, no one took DNA swabs from 28 others on electronic monitoring.

And those numbers may be light.

Sources within the Sheriff’s Department say the blunder went on for much longer than five months, perhaps as long as a year. They also say the number of inmates who didn’t give their DNA may have reached 1,000.

Something tells me Sheriff David Clarke won’t take any responsibility for his department’s own failures in collecting DNA samples from felons, because he strikes me more as the type to pass blame onto subordinates, rather than taken any responsibility himself.