"New York Police Expand DNA Testing" is the headline to this story today in the NY Times. Some quotes:
The investigation was among 250 cases, mostly burglaries in Queens, that were part of a trial expansion of DNA testing to crimes other than rape and homicide. Since it was started in January, the program, called Biotracks, has identified 23 suspects tied to 34 cases, most of which the police say would not otherwise have been solved.Posted by Marcia Oddi at October 26, 2004 08:26 AMIn that small pool of results, the police see enormous potential to combat the city's most vexing crimes, the ones that leave victims feeling frustrated and vulnerable and the investigators searching, usually in vain, for witnesses or fingerprints. In 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Police Department made arrests in just 15 percent of the city's burglaries.
The department hopes to expand DNA testing to burglaries, robberies and car thefts in all five boroughs, a goal that city officials say will be greatly advanced when the medical examiner's office opens a new $267 million DNA lab in 2006. "We're just beginning to learn how effective this is," Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said. "We've had it in rape cases and homicide cases. Now you see the kind of natural expansion and progression of the program."
As little as 10 years ago, testing samples from thousands of crime scenes would have been unthinkably expensive. Yet DNA has long held out the promise of revolutionizing the way not just rapes and homicides but virtually all types of crimes are solved. A handful of cities and states have begun to test that promise, using technology that can glean DNA from ever smaller samples of biological material. In New York, Mr. Medina is among the first group ofsuspects identified by DNA in a nonviolent crime.
Trying to find DNA at every burglary scene is not extravagant, Commissioner Kelly said, because evidence shows that many burglars are "crossover" criminals who commit violent crimes like rape. They are also more likely than other criminals to strike repeatedly.