Commander Dave Johnston manages to come up with a spectacularly excellent example of just why the police force should be firmly separated from politics:
DNA samples should be taken from babies and stored on a database to help in the fight against crime, a senior police officer said yesterday.
Commander Dave Johnston, Britain’s most senior murder investigator, said the information could be used to both to solve and prevent crimes.
He also suggested samples could be taken from people when they renewed their passports and from migrants arriving in the country.
Maybe Davey boy should spend less time watching CSI and more time in the real world. Sure, DNA is a useful tool for determining whether someone was at the scene of a crime; doesn’t mean they committed it, though. However useful DNA is to the investigation of a crime, to treat the whole population as potential suspects is going just a little too far. Do we wish to become a totalitarian state or not? Well, better not ask Dastardly Dave, we might not like the answer.
Mr Johnston, the head of the Metropolitan Police’s Homicide and Serious Crime Unit, told The Sun: “We have 300,000 unsolved cases where we have taken a profile at a crime scene but have not yet matched it.”
“As well as solving crime, it would really make someone think twice about committing crime if they knew their DNA was on a database.”
Really? Every advance made by law enforcement agencies is mirrored by advances made by the criminal fraternity. Does dopey Dave really think that someone, somewhere won’t find a ruse to fool the system? Does he not consider the possibility that innocent people will suffer miscarriages of justice as the law enforcement agencies rely heavily on “infallible” evidence (as opposed to effective police work)? Just as they did with Shirley McKie? After all, fingerprints are infallible, aren’t they?
What the fuckwitted Commander Johnston forgets is that he is stumbling into the political arena; bolstered no doubt by the Blair government’s desire to give the police whatever Draconian measure they ask for, for no other reason than that they ask. It is up to politicians to listen carefully to power hungry coppers on an ego trip; nod earnestly, smile and then tell them to fuck off and get on with policing and keep their noses out of politics. Dodgy Dave may think it appropriate to stimulate debate. In a personal capacity as a citizen that is within his rights. As a serving police officer, this is politics and well outside his remit.
I, for one, will never willingly submit my DNA so that Dangerous Dave can eliminate me from whatever enquiry he is currently engaged upon. His job is policing, not documenting, data tagging and cataloguing the population so that they may be treated as criminals. He is there to serve us, not the other way around.
Shami Chakrabati puts it succinctly:
“It is about time we had a debate about whether we want to turn from a nation of citizens into one of suspects,” she said.
“Certainly at Liberty, the answer is No.”
Quite.
it would really make someone think twice about committing crime if they knew their DNA was on a database
Clearly it doesn’t in many cases, though; if it did we wouldn’t see so many people troubling the courts on repeated occasions. Many criminals either act on the spur of the moment, without thinking about the likelihood of getting court, or just don’t think ahead, full stop. It always astonishes me how many burglars are caught because they’ve managed to cut themselves on broken glass when breaking in, thus leaving their DNA around — you’d have thought that the knowledge their DNA was on the database would make people take more care when breaking in, or, as you suggest, clean up after themselves. It doesn’t, though. Commander Johnston must realise this;