The Florida Department of Law Enforcement just handed local law enforcement officials and state attorneys 1,800 leads to unsolved rape cases — some going back a decade or more.

There’s still a lot more work to be done, but clearing up the backlog has been a huge help to law enforcement around the state.

Part of a nationwide project, the state law enforcement agency completed a three-year project to process the backlog of sexual assault kits sitting on shelves of local police stations and sheriff’s offices following a 2016 Sexual Assault Kit Assessment.

The assessment identified 6,661 kits and law enforcement agencies submitted an additional 2,000 kits, FDLE said. A total 8,023 sexual assault kits were processed, resulting in 1,814 Combined DNA Index System hits – or 22.6 percent of the untested backlog.

“I am proud of our FDLE scientists and law enforcement partners who worked diligently on this project ensuring older sexual assault kits were processed and the results entered into the DNA database,” said FDLE Commissioner Rick Swearingen in a news release. “The more information we have and can share, the stronger the possibility of solving these crimes.”

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It will be up to the agencies that had custody of the evidence to pursue those leads, FDLE officials said.

“They get returned to the agencies that submitted them,” FDLE spokeswoman Jessica Cary said. “Local law enforcement will have to take the initiative to work on these.”

The CODIS system uses technology to help law enforcement agencies link crimes to each other and to known offenders. A CODIS hit occurs when DNA evidence is matched to a sample in the DNA system, according to the FDLE’s sexual assault kit final progress report.

Not all CODIS hits are actionable, however. An actionable hit “is a match that provides new information to an investigation,” the report said. A hit to an offender already convicted in the related case would not be actionable.

The 2015 Legislature gave $300,000 to FDLE to conduct a statewide assessment of sexual assault kits that hadn’t been submitted for analysis. The response rate was high – 279 law enforcement agencies representing nearly 90 percent of the state’s population. Agencies that responded accounted for 91 percent of rapes reported in 2014, according to FDLE’s Uniform Crime Report statistics.

Local law enforcement agencies submitted these sexual assault kits starting in 2015 through June 2019. Not all local law enforcement agencies submit their evidence to FDLE labs because they use their own labs or private labs.

Each kit cost anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 to analyze.

Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office had the largest number of unprocessed kits, at 1,944, and 461 or 24 percent produced hits on CODIS.

Brevard County Sheriff’s Office submitted 137 kits and got 24 CODIS hits. Melbourne Police Department got 24 hits off of 86 kits submitted.

Lee County Sheriff’s Office submitted 332 kits and got 73 CODIS hits, while Fort Myers got 26 hits off of 86 kits submitted.

Collier County Sheriff’s Office submitted 45 kits and got 8 hits.Naples Police Department submitted 6 kits and got one hit.

Escambia County was on the low end with six kits submitted and zero CODIS hits. Pensacola Police Department had five hits on 32 kits.

Of the 159 kits submitted by Leon County Sheriff’s Office, Tallahassee Police Department, and the Florida State University, 20 came up positive, according to data provided by FDLE.

“We’ve been grinding through this with them the whole time,” Second Judicial Circuit State Attorney Jack Campbell said. “Multiple cases have been solved based on CODIS hits.”

Getting an arrest or conviction off these CODIS hits is by no means a slam dunk. After a law enforcement agency provides a CODIS hit to the state attorney’s office, its investigators have to conduct a one-on-one interview with the suspect and collect a confirming DNA sample.

Even if that turns out to be a hit, Campbell said, they’ve got to investigate further to make sure there isn’t some innocent explanation like the person is married to the rape victim, and also happens to be an ex-felon.

Jennifer Dritt, Florida Council Against Sexual Violence Executive Director, said in the FDLE release: “FDLE's processing of more than 8,000 previously unsubmitted rape kits in three years is remarkable, and gives hope to victims of a crime that has made their bodies evidence."

Contact Schweers at jschweers@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeffschweers.