The story is straight out of Nancy Drew: A half-eaten corn dog found at the scene of a suburban office burglary yields DNA that links the crime to a man with 27 previous arrests.But it's not fiction. It happened in Hennepin County, Minn., earlier this year.New research shows that using DNA to solve property crimes like burglaries -- and not just violent crimes like homicides and sexual assaults -- is particularly effective. Last month, a study found that DNA evidence from property crime scenes identifies suspects in twice as many cases and leads to twice as many arrests as more typical tools like witnesses and fingerprints. The study was from the Justice Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a non-partisan think tank.But in the report, "The DNA Field Experiment," researchers also wrote that if collecting and processing DNA evidence at property crimes became the norm nationwide, it would overwhelm the criminal justice system."Most jurisdictions are having trouble processing special assaults and homicides," let alone burglaries, said John Roman, the study's principal author.That finding is particularly relevant to local law enforcement officials. Because of limited forensic resources, the practice of using DNA testing is working its way into police custom slowly.Fred Fochtman is director of laboratories at the Allegheny County, Pa., medical examiner's office, which handles DNA evidence for Pittsburgh's police department. On average, his lab processes samples with a one-year delay."We always deal with a backlog as it is," he said.Violent crimes are processed first, but Fochtman hopes his lab will be able to process more property crimes when the backlog decreases, which he believes will happen in the next year due to grant funding from the National Institute of Justice and an increased use of robotics that automate some DNA testing.The lab recently changed its standards for processing evidence, said DNA analyst Janine Jeglinski.It now accepts material submitted without a "reference sample" from a suspect, which is then compared with the DNA from the scene. If the lab tests these unknowns and uploads them to CODIS -- an FBI database containing DNA profiles of missing persons and convicted offenders -- analysts can and often will find a match."We realized a lot of these burglaries and robberies are committed by repeat offenders," Jeglinski said.The extent to which police can rely on DNA evidence to solve property crimes depends on the resources dedicated to lower-priority cases."Different communities value burglaries differently," Roman said.In affluent Orange County, Calif., one of the five communities that participated in the Urban Institute's study, more than 70 percent of the forensic case load is from property crimes, said Dean Gialamas, who directs the crime lab there in addition to serving as president-elect of the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors.Gialamas said that increased testing of property crimes would lead to a lower crime rate in general. "Major criminals didn't start with rapes and murders," he said. "They started with petty crimes like shoplifting and burglary."In one Orange County case, a DNA sample from a burglary ended up solving three additional burglaries and one homicide.This type of breakthrough is one reason the authors of the Urban Institute report are pursuing a second study to determine if processing DNA evidence from property crimes will eventually save money, despite the initial cost."The big hurdle is that you have to have the laboratory capacity," Roman said.(E-mail Vivian Nereim at vnereim(at)post-gazette.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
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