WASHINGTON — Maryland State Police have begun to chip away at a backlog of digital evidence, and new funds have started flowing that could help the agency and other police departments around the state move faster on investigations into child sexual abuse.
Digital evidence from phones and computers touches all types of crimes, from homicides to financial fraud. But it is especially prominent in cases of child abuse, as smartphones have become a way for predators to connect with, groom and abuse their young victims.
Smartphones played key roles in two recent child abuse cases that shocked the region: Deonte Carraway and Carlos Bell, teaching assistants who victimized dozens of the students under their charge at schools in Prince George’s and Charles counties, respectively.
A WTOP investigation exposed a chronic backlog of digital evidence across Maryland — a tsunami of data waiting to be scrutinized by highly specialized technicians. Last summer, the backlog at the state police’s digital crime lab was 10 months.
Charles Tucker, an attorney representing one of Carlos Bell’s victims, said he’s elated to hear that more funding is now available to help police scrutinize the digital evidence faster.
“Unfortunately for the victims in the Bell case, it’s too late for them,” Tucker said.
Evidence on Bell’s cellphone languished for months, unseen by police, caught up in that backlog. When a state police analyst finally began to comb through the phone’s files, investigators in Charles County had enough evidence to quickly arrest Bell. But six months had passed since the phone was seized, and during that time, Bell victimized another eight children.
Bell was charged in Charles County with abusing or exploiting 42 children. Last month, he pleaded guilty to more than two dozen charges. He faces a lifetime behind bars when he is sentenced this spring.
“There’s a lot of other individuals out there like Bell waiting to be discovered and found, if only we can get through this backlog,” Tucker said.
New grant funding should help reduce the backlog, said Lt. Matthew Kail, who oversees the state police digital crime lab as the technical investigations section commander.
“The state police is putting more resources toward this,” Kail said.
“We are doing a lot of different things right now to move forward in this area — to hopefully get our backlog down and examine evidence in a more timely manner,” he said.
The agency plans to use roughly $771,000 in grant funds to pay for new equipment, including specialized computers with exceptional processing power and software — and the extra equipment will allow analysts to process twice as much evidence, Kail said.
The backlog, Kail said, is currently less than 10 months. But state police officials said that right now, it could take anywhere from four to 10 months to analyze the evidence in pending cases, depending on the type of case and the amount of data involved.
Kail said they also plan to hire a public affairs officer, whose primary job would be to help educate children and parents about the dangers that lurk on the internet and through social media.
The new funding comes from Alicia’s Law. Passed in 2016, the Maryland law provides $2 million in grant funding annually for police departments to investigate and prevent child sexual abuse...
