Acccording to the New York Times, "They call it the "magic box."" In the soon to be past, police departments relied on fingerprints to gather sufficient evidence to convict a criminal in a normal timespan. Sending the DNA for sequencing required a third-party labratory and months to locate its source. Soon, though, police departments from all areas of the United States will be employing rapid DNA machines that are used by police in the station and finish the sequence in ninety minutes! President Trump recently signed into action the Rapid DNA Act which means that those machines will all be connected to a national database of genes soon enough. Sometimes, the burglars who've been caught using these machines were still holding on to the items they stole. A second use for the machine proves to be its usefulness in identifying the victims of California's recent wildfires as most victims are missing identifying marks and traits. There has been concern, though, that this practice may lead to certain people's DNA being added to the databases of criminals. The NDAA (National District Attorney Association) doesn't condone the use of these machines without the review of a specialized forensic worker. Certain officers have stated that the machines are more used to generate leads rather than convict. Shockingly, a faulty sample was found as one out of one hundred fifty-five samples. Finally, one of the biggest concerns is that police will turn to a methodical elimination of suspects from a wide pool of possible hits using this machine making everyone guilty until proven innocent.
Do you think this new machine is enabling police to do better work, or handicapping them to a finger pointing game of suspicion based convictions of DNA found on the scene?
I personally think that this can do both, the officer may be put in a position where he can put away the suspect in a short amount of time, but the article did state that the machines couldn't correctly process scene DNA because there was multiple peoples' present.
Is it possible that police will grow lazy in their investigations, why or why not?
I think its setting them up to become less detailed and thorough in their investigations, but maybe the machine will come with a certain set of standards they must follow, like not convicting based solely upon the DNA results.
Make your own opinion, and read the full article here.
Replies
Good topic Joe but you didn't reply to any student comments which is worth 20 points.
I think it could go either way, the police could commence better work but at the same time they could easily just point fingers at people who were walking by on snapchat and a single strand of hair could fall out or something like that, and they would have to go to court and get involved with a crime they didn't even see or know about.
I think it would enable police officers more than hurt them because while they could identify the fingerprints right away, I don't think they usually narrow down their suspicions to just what may seem obvious, as they follow multiple leads. I also don't think it would put them in a position to put away the suspects in jail right away because they can't arrest without sufficient evidence and depending on the crime, the finding of a fingerprint wouldn't be enough to land them in the jailhouse sort of like what the certain officers said. They also have to take in consideration motive, weapons, alibis, other evidence, and whether or not samples from a suspect were planted purposefully or accidently. Since people already test DNA for the police, I think it'd make them more productive since it's pretty much only speeding up the process so they can look more into the investigation with some ideas in mind instead of having to wait around and follow possible goose chase leads instead.
I wouldn't say the police are able to do "better work"; however, the Rapid DNA machine could make the process more efficient since the samples wouldn't have to be sent to a lab (that is if there wasn't several peoples DNA on the same sample- in which case the machine is rendered useless and would have to be sent to a lab). I don’t see how police would become lazy, they’d still have to go through all their procedures prior to testing DNA, and even then they aren’t the ones, technically, testing it.