I count myself among those who were unhappy with the Charlottesville police’s DNA tests of Charlottesville black men last year. Black men throughout Charlottesville were pressured into providing DNA samples, told that, in doing so, they’d be ruling themselves out as a suspect in the ongoing case of the serial rapist. Nevermind that many of these men didn’t even vaguely match descriptions of the rapist. It struck me as not only unduly invasive (part of my Libertarian streak), but racially murky, at best.
Today, the New York Times has a story about the capture of Dennis Rader, aka “BTK,” the serial murderer. It’s a biography of Rader, describing his life in the community. Up until I read this, I’ve known the basics, like most other people, including that he was captured in part because of a DNA sample from his daughter that nearly matched samples from the crime scenes. I was a little taken aback when I read this graf:
In Wichita, where a generation of police officers spent their careers searching for B.T.K. – deconstructing his tangled, grisly writings, studying dozens of psychological profiles and swabbing DNA from the cheeks of 4,000 residents – some older detectives have now come to Mr. LaMunyon wondering whether they should have found Mr. Rader, who was hardly hiding away, decades sooner.
Fascinating! So the police took thousands of DNA samples from people, presumably not expecting to find the killer (who would never assent to a DNA test), but, instead, to find the killer’s relative.
Provided that the police used a fair and honest disposal policy (they take a sample from an individual, compare it to the killer’s DNA, and immediately dispose of the sample and all of the sample’s DNA data if it’s not a near-match), this seems like an excellent method of solving long-standing, serious cases like this.
If the Charlottesville and Albemarle police wanted to launch a project like this to capture the serial rapist, I think that would be just great. I’d say I’d be first in line, but I’m a white guy with no extended family in the area, so I don’t think I’d be particularly useful.
The most interesting part of this post is the discovery that you have a libertarian streak. I’m glad to hear that. :)
Also, I would be opposed to it unless no coercive action were taken, as was the case in some of the Charlottesville swabbing cases.
At the end of the day I still find it creepy. My Libertarian streak bonds with my sci-fi-geek streak fairly often.