Local law enforcement officials are starting to create their own DNA databases of potential suspects using samples collected with the donors' knowledge, and some without it, according to the New York Times.
The FBI and state crime labs previously kept DNA records. However, with the Supreme Court's recent ruling to allow Maryland authorities to collect DNA samples from those arrested for serious crimes, local authorities are now following in their footsteps.
According to the Times, local databases will operate under their own rules, providing the police much more leeway than state and federal regulations.
Local police collect samples from far more than those convicted of or arrested for serious offenses. Even those who are found innocent of crimes reportedly will have their DNA saved for future searches.
Law enforcement officials believe the crime-solving benefits of local databases are a great asset.
"Our take is that it's good for law enforcement and good for the community," Doug Muldoon, police chief of Palm Bay, a city of about 100,000 in Central Florida, about its database, which has produced 1,000 matches, told the Times.
Muldoon told the Times that his officers could now use DNA to address the crime conditions "in our community - property crimes and burglaries."
According to reports, state crime labs can take months to analyze evidence from low-level felonies.
For police officials, getting a local database of suspects' DNA cut down on their frustration with the FBI or state lab databases. These databases a reportedly filled with DNA samples of those who are already set to go to prison.
"Unfortunately, what goes into the national database are mostly reference swabs of people who are going to prison," told Jay Whitt of the company DNA:SI Labs to the Times. "They're not the ones we're dealing with day in day out, the ones still on the street just slipping under the radar."
Though the database helps local authorities capture criminals, the rise in these local databases worries critics as it brings up privacy issues.
Allowing local police officials to create their own policies about taking DNA samples has reportedly increased the collections of samples without warrants. Some individuals that are only suspected of a crime are being asked to give samples and officials still keep the sample even if the suspect is cleared.
"We have been warning law enforcement that when public attention began to focus on these rogue, unregulated databases, people would be disturbed," Barry Scheck, a co-director of the Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners, told the Times. "Law enforcement has just gone ahead and started collecting DNA samples from suspects in an unregulated fashion."
To read more about the local authorities collection of DNA, click here.
