Recently, New York City’s Mayor and Police Commissioner made a big push for wider use of DNA analysis in law enforcement. In a proposed new policy, anyone who gets arrested – from red-light runners and turnstile jumpers to rapists, robbers and killers – would have a DNA sample taken. A huge data DNA bank like the state and national fingerprint data banks could then solve crimes by computer matching of crime scene evidence and DNA from previous offenders.

To understand this proposal and what might be involved in implementing it, I turned to Dr. Lawrence Kobilinsky, an internationally renowned forensic scientist. He is Associate Provost at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a member of the doctoral faculty in biochemistry at the graduate center of the City University of New York. He also served as a consultant to CBS News, where he commented on the issues regarding blood during the O.J. Simpson trial.

Now, Kobilinsky regularly supports other major cases as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Justice and other organizations. He has published extensively on the subject on DNA analysis and has made many presentations at meetings around the world. In recent years, he has become a super crime expert who appears on TV regularly and jets around the world, advising foreign police agencies on science, labs, and more humane techniques of policing.

When I first met Larry, I was as green as Kermit the Frog. I was a novelist with a contract to write three suspense novels featuring cops and bad guys, wounds and weapons. I had no idea what forensic research was all about. Larry was the forensic science professor who ran the DNA lab at John Jay College, and I appealed to him for help. Back in 1992, DNA analysis was a new development – a tool not considered totally reliable and certainly not approved by every state as admissible physical evidence in court. Larry took
me into his lab and showed me how DNA typing was done. Since then, he has been a great resource for me.

Over salads at the fabulous new Atlas Restaurant on Central Park South while the daffodils were popping in the park, I asked Larry why DNA was so important and what some of the implications of a DNA databank would be. 

LG: What makes DNA so much better than fingerprinting? Fingerprinting is very easy to do and can be transmitted to national – and even international data banks – virtually instantaneously.

LK: With fingerprints, the analysis is of minutia, ridges or peculiarities that are individual points of identification. In order to make a comparison, you need a certain number of markers. The criteria may be six or eight.

With DNA, it's not six or eight or thirteen markers that are comparable. You're matching a whole picture, it's everything. It's beyond question. Another difference, of course, is with fingerprints you need to have the fingerprints at the scene. With DNA, you can get your evidence from many sources – saliva from apple core or a drop of blood left at the crime scene, semen, sweat. even oil from the skin. It's much easier to obtain than fingerprints.

LG: Here's an example I read about in the paper this morning. A man had been committing rapes in the city, but there was no evidence to arrest a suspect. In a break-in and attempted rape of a twelve-year-old girl, the father stabbed the girl's attacker. A DNA sample was taken from blood on the knife, and that linked him to DNA taken from the other rapes. This guy is going away forever.

In England, Scotland Yard is now doing this kind of DNA typing for all criminals. Mayor Guiliani has said he would support taking DNA samples at birth. Some people think that the huge data bank that would result might be the answer to crime. What actually is involved in doing DNA sampling?

LK: It's a complicated process. First there is documentation. A sample has to be taken. In the past that meant, transporting the person to a medical office in order to have the extraction done by a licensed phlebotomist. But that part has changed. Cheek cells work just as well and the sample can be taken anywhere with a mouth swab. After the sample is taken, it has to go to a special lab. In New York City , it is the Medical Examiner's Office. There, the sample is purified to isolate the DNA. The first two steps could take a day or two. Then there is chemical processing.

LG: What does that involve?

(I was eating a great salad at this point and the following is what my notes read. Did I understand it? Could I pass the course? Not a chance.)

LK: PCR amplification, polymerase chain reaction. Then detection, either gel or capillary electrophoresis. Then, observation is necessary to generate a profile.

LG: I got it. In short, there are a number of what I'll call wet steps that have to be done before you can get to the nice dry computer printout part, is that right?

LK: Yes, and these chemical processes have to completed by well-trained experts. The next step is digitalizing the profile so that it can be transmitted. Then after the profile is digitized, it has to be scrambled.

LG: Why scramble after all that trouble?

LK: Because, as I said, DNA shows everything, a person's whole genetic background. DNA is used medically for much more than identification. It shows a person's potential foes, netic diseases. So, in the case of law enforcement, it's much more information than the government needs. And let's put it this way, a DNA profile can show a lot about personality, too, and possibly even predict the potential for violent, antisocial behaviors.
It's possible DNA could also be used, or abused, as a predictor of behavior. So, if the information were readily available, it could have wide-reaching negative implications like the potential of punishing people for things they haven't done but might do some time in the future.

LG: Of course, this is what civil libertarians are worried about.

LK: Yes, only the part of the profile that can be used for identification can be saved and put in the databanks. The NDIS is the national repository for genetic profiles obtained from state labs. New York State will have a reporting lab like other states and will input genetic profiles into NDIS. At the moment, there is a backlog of some 400,000 DNA cases across the country that have yet to be processed. These are crime scene samples from major felonies, not petty crimes.

LG: Why is there such a huge backlog?

LK: In New York, the backlog of major cases – among them, assault, rape, and homicide – is now over 12,000. With huge caseload like that, it can take months to get the DNA done. In a really rush case, it used to take up to a week or two. But now, we have new technology that's much faster. The chemical processing can be done in twenty-four hours.

LG: Why is it taking so long? What are the issues surrounding DNA that haven't been resolved?

LK: It's money and labs. At the moment, people in labs are working around the clock. They don't have lives. There isn't enough equipment. The supplies are expensive. There's a very small trained work force for this, and for the most part, forensic labs are not doing the work. That means private labs have to be built, and the question is space and cost. It's definitely better to have an assembly line where people specialize in one part of the process, instead of one person doing it all, from chemistry to computer. In New York City, for example, the ME's office is expanding its capacity, but it still can't keep up.

The afternoon was passing, and Larry had a TV appearance scheduled. We had to
say goodbye.

LG: Larry, I think I've got it. To sum up, what you're saying is that DNA has come a long way in terms of being accepted as a forensic tool – and what we haven't talked about is that DNA can clear suspects as well as actually freeing people convicted of crimes they didn't commit – but there isn't the infrastructure to process the cases on the books at the moment. So expanding beyond that is not yet practical.

LK: Yes, just to have major cases processed quickly and efficiently would be a huge step forward at this point. The question of taking swabs of everyone would raise the question of how long you would keep them and how cost effective it would be to invest hundreds of millions of dollars to create the labs to process the DNA of everyone who got stopped for every infraction. 

It's mindboggling to think of that. Who hasn't gotten a ticket for speeding? We'd all be in the databank and it would cost hundreds of dollars each to put us there. In Great Britain, what they're turning up are petty criminals, not killers. The question is if we committed the resources, would it pay off? How many violent dangerous offenders would it turn up? How cost effective would it be?

I thanked him for the insights, and we said good bye. Outside the sun was shining, and the daffodils were nodding. That day, two people I know received summons for minor traffic violations. Both were horrified at even the whisper of a possibility of appropriated cheek cells...

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