Busting Burglars With Spit, Vomit By Luke O'Brien Wired News
02:00 AM Jul, 18, 2006 http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71398-0.html?tw=wn_index_1 WASHINGTON -- The days when car thieves and cat burglars could cover their tracks just by donning a pair of gloves may be over. An experimental Justice Department program has police departments collecting DNA evidence in nonviolent crimes for the first time, so a single stray hair can lock up a casual sneak thief. Until recently, DNA evidence was used almost solely to investigate violent offenses such as murders or rapes -- CSI kinds of stuff. The Department of Justice hopes to expand that focus. As part of a five-year, $1 billion White House initiative, the department has launched an 18-month program in five major cities to get cops to apply CSI-style DNA-analysis techniques to routine crimes. Law enforcement officials described some of the results at the annual National Institute of Justice conference here Monday. "We weren't using biological evidence on property crimes," says Detective Phillip Stanford of the Denver Police Department, one of the departments that received a grant under the program last October. When they started, they noticed results immediately, apprehending a husband-and-wife team of suspected serial burglars. The smoking gun in the case turned out to be a cigarette butt; one of the thieves had left it at the scene with his saliva on it. And it's not just cigarettes that burglary detectives are on the lookout for now. Anything, it turns out, can be evidence in a property crime: a mucus-covered tissue, an empty Coke can, a leftover sandwich, even a puddle of vomit. The strangest evidence Stanford has collected was a ball of wax he dislodged from the earpiece of a two-way radio. In Denver and the other areas participating in the program -- Los Angeles; Phoenix; Topeka, Kansas; and Orange County, California -- the main challenge has been getting police to rethink the way they look at crime scenes, interrogate suspects and gather evidence. "Before it was drugs, guns and clothing," Stanford says of the evidence cops used to haul back to the station. "Now you've got guys walking in here with ... half-eaten pizza." Around 800 police in Denver had to be trained in new methods of evidence gathering, according to Stanford. Cops learned to pull on their latex gloves and look everywhere for clues. In the garbage. In the fridge. Maybe even, alas, in the toilet. Police in other cities have done the same. "The devil is in the details," says Kathy Browning, a social-science analyst at the National Institute of Justice, or NIJ, the research-and-development branch of the Justice Department that oversees the DNA program and hands out grants. "This isn't just about more lab technicians. This a new way of thinking about crimes." Since 1990, law enforcement officials on the local, state and federal levels have collected DNA samples from felons. These samples are uploaded into a giant set of databases called the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS. Today, 35 states require DNA collection from convicted criminals. In 2004, the NIJ gave grants to three police departments in New York and Florida to help reduce their backlogs of untested DNA evidence, and was surprised when the departments began winning property-crime convictions with some of the test results. NIJ's DNA-property-crime program is only in its trial phase in the five cities, and it's unclear if funding will be extended. But if the government can coax its thousands of grantees around the country to link up with CODIS and embrace new investigative techniques, burglars and car thieves best beware. After all, even the Pink Panther sheds. ================================================= George Antunes Voice (713) 743-3923 Associate Professor Fax (713) 743-3927 Political Science Internet: antunes at uh dot edu University of Houston Houston, TX 77204-3011 Reply with a "Thank you" if you liked this post. _____________________________ MEDIANEWS mailing list [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
