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by WILL FOLKS
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Late last month, South Carolina’s top cop appeared before a panel of Palmetto State lawmakers and blasted a legislative audit which criticized his agency’s handling of a backlog of sexual assault kits.
Mark Keel, chief of the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division (SLED), pulled no punches in his testimony before the S.C. House oversight committee last Thursday (October 30, 2025).
“I want to take you back to when this legislation was being debated and ultimately enacted,” Keel said in prepared remarks (.pdf) delivered to the panel. “SLED encouraged members of the General Assembly to make the implementation deadline contingent upon funding since there was no funding associated with the legislation. Ultimately it was enacted and the two-year clock started upon the signature of the governor… again without any dedicated funding.”
“To date, we still have no actual basis or understanding of how two years to fully implement the system was chosen,” Keel added.
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According to an October 2024 report (.pdf) prepared by the S.C. Legislative Audit Council (SCLAC), SLED failed to meet its deadline for establishing a sexual assault kit tracking system, failed to adequately communicate with stakeholders during the process, failed to comply with state law regarding the vendor it ultimately chose, failed to properly track cases under the new system and failed to provide transparency to the public about its work.
“The current system of investigating sexual assault offenses is inefficient,” the audit concluded. “In the absence of mandated processing and storage times, justice is being delayed or denied for victims, many of whom are under the age of eighteen.”
In an official response (.pdf) submitted last fall, Keel blasted the SCLAC report as containing “countless misrepresentations,” adding that auditors “disregarded important information in order to paint a seemingly predetermined and flawed narrative of SLED’s performance, ultimately mistakenly indicating that implementation was in large part a failure rather than a resounding success for the State of South Carolina and the Sexual Assault Survivor community.”
In his testimony last week, Keel reiterated these points. He also said auditors mistakenly presumed the legislation signed by governor Henry McMaster five years ago – Act 134 of 2020 – gave SLED extensive authority to compel action on rape kits in the hands of local law enforcement and medical facilities.
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RELATED | S.C. TOP COP BLASTS NORMAN
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Specifically, Keel claimed auditors “mistakenly (led) the General Assembly and the public to believe the statute granted SLED wide ranging authority including the authority to go to every law enforcement agency in South Carolina and demand access to every sexual assault kit for the purposes of creating an inventory.”
In reality, “the bill as enacted gave SLED no authority to promulgate regulations or to enforce inaction by local law enforcement or medical facilities” – including the absence of any authority to establish time frames for the retrieval of these kits by local law enforcement, the delivery of these kits to forensic laboratories or the testing of these kits by those facilities.
Despite these purported failures of the original legislation, SLED touted the enrollment of 95% of law enforcement agencies and 76% of medical facilities in the new system – up from 64% of agencies and 50% of facilities in July 2024.
This is the second time in the last few weeks Keel has pushed back against criticism of his agency. Earlier last month, he blasted U.S. congressman Ralph Norman after the latter blamed SLED for a fatal loophole in the Palmetto State’s crime reporting process.
Keep it tuned to FITSNews as we track this and other criminal justice issues ahead of the upcoming session of the S.C. General Assembly.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the founding editor of the news outlet you are currently reading. Prior to founding FITSNews, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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1 comment
Some people in government should never be in positions of leadership.