Well, that's a bit like saying "if you have nothing to hide, please empty your pockets".
It is true that most reasonable people knowing there is a murder investigation will do what they can to help the police. And that is the right thing to do. And that's especially true if you (as is seems here) knew the deceased and might be seen as having some connection to the murder -- excluding yourself makes the police job much easier.
But the argument "if you have nothing to hide..." is based on assumptions of intrusive State power that just aren't there -- Canadians have a right, absent some specific regulation to the contrary, to be left alone and not to have their DNA put onto police files for all time:
Police investigating the 2010 murder of Sonia Varaschin say they expect to collect the DNA evidence they need to identify her killer within two or three weeks.
“The message today is to the killer: We have your DNA, it is only a matter of time until we find out who you are,” Ontario Provinical Police Const. Peter Leon told a news conference outside Orangeville’s police station Wednesday morning.
“If you have nothing to hide, then it’s is your obligation to provide that DNA sample.”
The Star that police would launch a new phase into the search for the killer of the 42-year-old Orangeville nurse by asking all adult males who had contact “directly or indirectly” with her to provide DNA samples.
“Our investigators are confident the DNA that has been collected [at the murder scene] is of the killer,” Leon said.
Asked whether requests for DNA samples could be seen as an invasion of privacy, Leon said the need to solve the case trumps those concerns. “We respect the fact that someone may wish to say no,” he said, but “each and every person who is approached has a moral obligation to participate.”
DNA testing “has been used in many investigations,” he added. “The only thing that is different is that we are announcing it today.”
In 2003, police went door-to-door in west Toronto asking men to provide a DNA sample during their investigation into the murder of 10-year-old Holly Jones.
Michael Briere, 35, refused, one of only two men out of 300 who said no. After a month under around-the-clock surveillance, Briere was arrested when his DNA matched a sample taken from a discarded pop can. He was convicted and is serving a life sentence.
While police expect to have samples in the Varaschin case collected by mid-June, results depend on how quickly the “very, very busy” Centre for Forensics Sciences can examine each piece of evidence, Leon said.
http://bit.ly/lHWt0C
6 comments:
When police find that the sample does not match are they under any obligation to destroy it? I wouldn't have a problem volunteering a sample if I knew it (and all results) was going to be destroyed after I was excluded. My objection is to being in a national database afterwards. If not I would be one of those that refuses.
National databases are bad all around. You watch CSI, they do a DNA comparison, and bam perfect database match, every time. In reality there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and DNA-matching is all statistics.
If there's already a suspect in mind for other reasons, DNA can confirm or exclude. A database for extremely violent offenders is useful, since the risk of serious harm from re-offending is high, and the number of people in the database is small. But once a database balloons into the millions, the risk of false matches starts getting too high. Especially when a jury's thought process goes DNA? Match? Guilty.
Here's my concern Rat -- I have seen "destroyed" fingerprints turn up years later. My sense is that nothing is ever destroyed -- once it's on system it's on system for good. Now, if I had gone out with someone and they were killed (so there was a specific reason to give up my DNA) I probably would. But I would respect someone who would not and would not think them thereby likely to be a criminal.
"I have seen "destroyed" fingerprints turn up years later."
That's what worries me. That and the fact that backups and archiving makes it almost impossible to really destroy data.
Related, as an adoptive parent going through the process again I now know that fully 1/3rd of male PAPs are referred for fingerprinting because their birth date matches that of a pardoned sex offender. What happens to those 'prints after the check? I'd sure like to know.
Excuse me? Another disgusting step toward a police state.
This is the same police force whose officers break a man's arm at the G20 and don't include their role in assault in their reports? The same cops whose supervisors looked the other way when their squads reported for duty out of uniform, without identifying badges? The same supervisors who looked the other way when their squads went on rampage? The same cops who refused to report the brutality of their fellow officers, then refused to identify the photo of their fellow officer when ordered to do so?
Those cops? The ones who refuse to perform their sworn duty to uphold the law?
Let's see them, including Bill Blair, follow their own advice and lead by example. If they have nothing to hide...
Mr. Morton, you wrote about being improperly stopped by the police at the time of the G20. Even you with your legal training, your authority as an officer of the court, and your status as a professor of law gave up your charter rights rather than be hassled by a couple of cops. Ordinary people don't have a chance.
Do Canadians have any rights and freedoms under the Charter, or are we all deluded?
p2p
I think with Fantino coming in to Defence, we might see a further blurring of the line between the military and security/police.
Post a Comment