Police off to troubling start getting consent for DNA

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The problem with developing police databases such as the one the Daytona Beach Police Department is building with the DNA samples of the people it arrests is that the process easily lends itself to abuse, fraud or gross blunders that may or may not be caught in time.

One such blunder makes the point. In a training video by the Police Department on how to swab suspects' mouths for DNA samples, the training officer describes how to do the procedure and asks the suspect to sign a consent form only after the swab. That's not legal. The suspect must give consent first, otherwise the swab violates the suspects rights.

The training officer in the video committed another blunder. "If the subject refuses the form," he says, "note on the form that they've refused, go ahead and tag the evidence anyway." There ought to have been no evidence to start with if the subject refused to sign the form. After The News-Journal reported the training video's errors, Daytona Beach police Chief Mike Chitwood conceded that those aspects of the video were a mistake.

What if there'd been no news report? If the officer training others about DNA swabbing is misinformed, where are the controls -- and what confidence can people have in the controls surrounding other aspects of DNA tracking, from ensuring that "consent" isn't creative coercion to properly conducting the tests, administering the data and using it appropriately? The dragnet raises more troubling questions than it answers. At $200 to $500 for each DNA test, who'll foot the bill in a period of budget reductions across the state? (Daytona Beach arrested 11,000 people last year. Assuming that half had consented to DNA swabs, that's $1.1 million to $2.75 million in DNA tests.)

http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Opinion/Editorials/opnOPN69022608.htm

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