Simple cotton swabs would be rubbed inside the mouths of suspects. The collected human cheek cells would then be mined for DNA strands. And those samples would be put together as potential evidence in prosecutions.
But those few elemental steps -- to be taken by city police officers -- would represent a vast expansion of the tools available for solving criminal cases under a proposal laid out by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday in his annual State of the City address.
Virtually all suspects would have samples of their DNA taken. The concept leaps far beyond current practice, which is collecting DNA just from those convicted of all felonies and some misdemeanors.
Bloomberg also challenged scientists to invent a portable, suitcase-size device to allow the police department to analyze DNA more quickly and thoroughly at the scene of a crime. He said he would be willing to pay a "six-figure prize" to whoever invents the device.
A day after the mayor's speech, however, important questions about the plans hung in the air, even among supporters. Among them: With 375,659 felony and misdemeanor arrests last year, how realistic would it be to test the DNA of everyone charged with a crime? What are the costs and hurdles for implementing a program like this? How quickly can a police force of tens of thousands of officers be trained?
Another question is how likely Bloomberg's DNA testing proposal is to pass in Albany, especially among divided state legislators who are up for re-election this year and who blocked approval for expanding genetic fingerprinting for those convicted of felonies and some misdemeanors for several years before approving it.
A move by New York Governor Eliot Spitzer to expand the DNA database -- not nearly as radically as Bloomberg wants to -- died on the vine last year in the state capitol. The Republican-led Senate passed it; the Democrat-led Assembly passed a different measure.
Still, the importance of DNA testing resounds in the law enforcement community.
It was discussed on Thursday at the state District Attorneys Association's board of directors meeting, said Richard Brown, the Queens district attorney. Those prosecutors embrace the notion of expanding genetic testing, he said, because "too many" violent people "all too often escape identification and remain free."
At the same time, Brown says he and his colleagues see the challenges and quandaries raised by Bloomberg's proposal -- and heed them.
"We recognize the fact that there are these kinds of issues, such as the impact on the DNA labs, the costs, the sealing of case files in the event of a dismissal of the charges and the training issues and all of the civil liberties issues," Brown said. "Those are questions that have to be answered and we recognize that fact, but we would like to move in the direction of getting DNA for all arrests, much the way we do with fingerprints."
As a practical matter, Richard Aborn, president of the Citizens Crime Commission, a group that monitors crime and police policies, said administering a DNA test was the easy part.
"It is, in fact, the easiest biological sample to take," Aborn said. "You literally take a cotton swab and rub it inside the cheek."
More complicated, and potentially time-consuming, is building up the kind of expertise and infrastructure to collect and store the DNA and to train people in laboratories in the correct handling of this potential evidence.
John Feinblatt, New York City's criminal justice coordinator, said "very little training" was needed for police officers to learn to do the swabbing; it takes 30 minutes and is more about completing paperwork than taking the swab. He said the training would be carried out at the Police Academy or during in-service training. Currently, the police department takes about 350 swabs a month, so a base of knowledge exists. At the state police crime laboratory in Albany, where the samples would be sent, a "huge statewide apparatus" is in place that has been managing incremental increases in the DNA caseload over the years, he said.
Feinblatt said the program would probably cost about US$7 million annually, with kits priced at US$4 each. But he said the costs were negligible.
"When you think about the potential for preventing crime, it is hard to put a dollar figure on preventing homicides and rapes and robberies and burglaries, which are the kinds of cases most commonly where you find DNA evidence," Feinblatt said.
Chauncey Parker, who was the director of criminal justice services under former governor George Pataki, said an expansion of the DNA database would require more resources for equipment and personnel. But, he said, the database is capable of expansion.
"It's not like you need to invent the iPod; you are just making more of them," said Parker, who is director of the New York/New Jersey High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a federally financed crime fighting program. "This is no more complicated; it is just scaling it up."
However, officials at the New York Civil Liberties Union said that privacy issues aside, the mayor's proposal would require turning the collection and analysis of DNA samples into a mass-production operation. That, said Donna Lieberman, the group's executive director, would be an invitation to error, inefficiency and fraud.
"By massively expanding the database to include misdemeanors, what you do is overwhelm the system with samples that inevitably slow down the process of investigating," said Robert Perry, the group's legislative director. "This is not as simple and clear a process as it is sometimes presented."
Lieberman said DNA analysis is a precise science and its precision "depends on a whole host of human input, which can go awry at any step in the process."
Feinblatt stressed that once the DNA was collected, it would be treated the way fingerprints are treated now.
"If somebody is found not guilty, what happens to the fingerprint?" he said. "The person can have a choice of having it destroyed or returned to them and we would treat DNA the exact same way."
For as many questions as they raised, several people in and out of law enforcement praised the concept of the proposals, discounting criticism the ideas have drawn from privacy advocates and others.
"I think it is literally the 21st century fingerprint," Aborn said. "And we should treat DNA samples the same way we treat fingerprints."
As for the plan to offer up to the six-figure prize to any entrepreneur who can build a device to instantly analyze evidence, like blood, at a crime scene, Feinblatt said the administration was trying to encourage scientists' creative potential.
"We know that science is working hard on this issue," he said. "By creating this prize, we are trying to push it over the finish line."
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