D.A.’s DNA database gets appraisal

Newport Beach and Costa Mesa police say they see great potential in a new local DNA database announced recently by Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckus.

Newport Beach police have solved more cases as use of DNA evidence increases, and the new database is the next step, Sgt. Evan Sailor said.

Costa Mesa Police Chief Christopher Shawkey said DNA databases are the future of law enforcement, but he expressed some caution about resources.

“I think eventually it’ll become as commonplace as fingerprinting,” Shawkey said. “We’re not quite at that point yet, but the idea definitely has merit.”

The program, funded by an Orange County Board of Supervisors vote last week, will have the district attorney require a DNA test as part of criminal probation conditions for all crimes. That information will go into a database that local law enforcement can use to track down suspects. Law enforcement officials have called the local database the first program of its kind.

“People who commit crimes tend to do it in a cluster,” said Susan Schroeder, district attorney spokeswoman. “We want to make sure that if somebody is committing crimes over and over again in a limited area, we catch up to that person.”

The database would help defendants as well, because the wrongfully accused would have a new way to prove their innocence, Schroeder said.

Some have worried about the possible resource strain that could occur when every crime scene has a chance of a DNA match, but police said the benefits outweighed the drawbacks.

The adoption of fingerprinting in the 20th century was a strain on officers at the time, but it transformed police work, Shawkey said, adding calls for service might increase if people were more confident petty crime could be solved.

“I would hope people would report crimes like this to us anyway, because that’s how we identify trends, but I recognize a lot is unreported,” he said. “We will just have to monitor any increase.”

Crime scene investigators had seen this program in the works a year ago and started collecting more DNA, Costa Mesa Sgt. Marty Carver said. At current levels of demand, resources shouldn’t be a problem, he said.

Newport Beach police can collect all the DNA necessary, Sailor said. The main bottleneck in using DNA more is at increasingly burdened processing labs, a problem the new initiative is designed to fix by contracting work out to third parties.

“This should allow us to process a lot more,” he said. “More collection wouldn’t really burden us in terms of manpower.”

Keeping up with increasingly sophisticated criminals was worth struggling over how to handle the caseload, Schroeder said.

“As law enforcement, we’re always strained on budget,” she said. “We’re always pushing the envelope. You can’t not try — you have to constantly try.”