From months to minutes: Fishers PD first in Indiana to use rapid DNA, FBI urges caution

When a 22-year-old motorcyclist was killed in a high-speed crash on U.S. 31 this summer, authorities had difficulty making a positive identification.

The driver had hit a turning flatbed truck June 29th but his face was badly disfigured. The Hamilton County coroner asked for help from Fishers police, which had recently purchased rapid DNA technology. The coroner submitted a DNA sample from the victim and a cheek swab from his mother.

In 90 minutes, the police technicians confirmed the identity of the Colfax resident, saving a delay of weeks or months when samples are sent to the state lab for forensic testing.

“We were able to do so immediately, where standard testing could take months to come back, a huge relief for the families,” said Police Chief Ed Gebhart.

Fishers is the first department in the state to use rapid DNA testing, which they say will allow investigators to more quickly identify fatal trauma victims and solve crimes. The department plans to soon roll out a full program in tandem with Indiana State Police, which keeps a database of crime scene DNA processed through its lab and swabs from people convicted of felonies.

Officials said it has already been used it in a handful of criminal cases, including an arrest in a drunk driving crash with injuries, and has confirmed identifies in three coroner cases in which victims were disfigured.

Mayor Scott Fadness said the rapid DNA could be helpful identifying victims promptly in a major disaster or to sniff out human traffickers if police come across an adult suspiciously transporting children they claim are their own.

Police also said they can use the rapid DNA can help them arrest repeat offenders of local crimes like car theft, burglaries or sexual assaults by building a database of people who consent to having their cheeks swabbed.

“It could play a role in lesser crimes and some of those that can tied to more serious crimes,” Gebhart said.

Early success with rapid DNA

The desk-top contraption spits out results of DNA samples inserted on a thin cartridge and displays the findings on computer screens. The city bought the machine for $237,000 from Thermo Fisher Scientific, of Massachusetts, one of two companies approved by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for rapid DNA testing.

Rapid DNA results are most accurate when used for cheek swabs to identify people. Swabs of the mouth, known as single source samples, have no chance of being mixed up with other DNA. The FBI said the swabs are adequate to compare to profiles of unsolved crimes in its national Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) and a match is enough for local police to hold a person while it launches an investigation.

But because rapid DNA is not as precise as conventional lab testing, the FBI and the National District Attorneys Association (NDAA) recommend against using it to build comparative profiles from crime scenes, where evidence is often contaminated, sparse, or includes samples from several people.

Fishers and some other police departments now using rapid DNA, however, said it is good enough to use as an investigative tool at crimes scenes if it’s likely the evidence came from a single source.

Detective Sgt. James Hawkins said the rapid testing recently helped identify a drunk driver who was in a crash that injured four people. No one was behind the steering wheel when officers arrived, and an occupant of the car denied he was the driver. But police were able to take a blood sample from the driver’s side airbag and it matched the person denying he was behind the wheel.

The rapid tests might also be used if police have a suspect in a burglary in which a sample from a pool of blood at a broken window, for example, can be collected, Hawkins said.

FBI says to limit use

The FBI has determined the technology needs to advance before crime scene evidence can be compared against profiles in the CODIS database of the most violent criminals and crimes and handling that evidence is most safely done in a forensic lab.

“Mouth swabs are ideal for Rapid DNA devices, as they contain large amounts of fresh DNA from one Individual,” the FBI wrote in a overview of its policy updated in January. “However, crime scene samples can vary widely due to factors such as age, exposure to the elements, or characteristics related to the amount and quality of DNA. Of critical concern, crime scene samples often contain mixtures of DNA from more than one individual which require interpretation by a trained scientist.”

The district attorneys association policy echoes the FBI.

One problem with rapid DNA, the agencies said, is that a larger sample is needed for many of the machines because the evidence is destroyed once it’s put in the machines, which is not the case in a forensic lab. If a police technician using rapid DNA didn’t preserve enough DNA for confirmatory lab testing, then the sample is gone for good.

The manufacturer of the Fishers machine and Gebhart said samples can be re-tested on it.

“And we recommend that police always collect enough to send one sample to the lab,” said Fishers Scientific global marketing development manager Ariana Wheaton. “If there isn’t enough for both, send what you have to the lab.”

Some DNA experts are worried police officers handling and analyzing delicate evidence at crime scenes from beginning to end has too many potential pitfalls.

“It is hard to stress how important it is that the evidence is handled with the utmost expertise at every step in order for everyone to be confident in it,” said Dan Krane, a biology professor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, who researches DNA and owns a forensic science consulting firm. “After collection at the scene, that should really end their involvement.”

More:Indiana FBI agents are working on these 6 cases. Can you help solve one?

Krane said collecting DNA at crimes scene, on the supposition that it is from a single source “could be a slippery slope,” that leads officers to begin bagging more tainted evidence. “I think it is a shiny new toy and there is a chance it will be used in ways that are not a good idea,” he said.

Jay Stanley, a senior policy expert with the American Civil Liberties Union, said even with traditional laboratory DNA testing there have been “terrible mistakes,” that are examples of how sensitive the evidence is.

The most egregious error was acknowledged in 2015 when the Justice Department said most examiners in an FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony interpreting DNA results in nearly all trials over more than a two-decade period before 2000. In another case, the New York City Medical Examiner’s office in 2013 had to review more than 800 rape cases from a 10-year period during which a lab tech mishandled DNA evidence.

Consensual swabs a "fiction"

Though people convicted of felonies in Indiana are required to submit to DNA swabs when they are booked into jail, rapid DNA testing will allow Fishers to build its own database from people being questioned about lesser crimes who consent to being swabbed. Seeking that consent would be done only when investigators think it could link someone to a specific crime or clear them of one, or they believe someone may have been involved in other crimes, Gebhart said.

Fishers has outlined its policy in an eight-page general order for officers. It instructs them on how to preserve DNA at scenes, bag it, process it and analyze it. The evidence will be handled by a “shift evidence tech” who “receive(s) special training in the collection of DNA evidence.”

Fishers has drawn up a consent form for people who agree to give a DNA samples. It states that the person has a right to refuse and that, even if they agree, they can ask that the sample be removed afterward. It also says that police can seek a search warrant to get the sample.

Outside experts said it was promising that Fishers has a written policy and was important that it be transparent about how the technology was being deployed. Consensual swabs, said Jason Kreag, an associate professor at the University of Arizona who teaches criminal procedure, could open police up to suspicion about how fairly it is applied.

“It shouldn’t be that you rely on intuition and round-up of the usual suspects you think committed the crime,” said Kreag, who wrote and academic paper about rapid DNA use by police.

Stanley, of the ACLU, said it is difficult to imagine those giving consent don’t feel pressured. “The consent is a fiction,” Stanley said. “You’ve been arrested and are being handled by police and are not free.” He said the warning that a search warrant could be sought “is telling you that it is not worth your time to decline, so don’t bother.”

City officials said they will post the general order on the Fishers website "transparency" page and include details of how they technology was used in its annual reports.

The FBI has already partnered with some police departments to test the efficacy of rapid DNA swabs and Wheaton, of Fishers Scientific, said the next step will be a pilot program with the FBI to determine if rapid tests in the field can be improved so that evidence can be matched against the national database.

Several other departments are already using rapid DNA at crime scenes and building databases.

Massive database

The Bensalem, Pennsylvania, police department was one of the first to use the technology beginning in 2017 and it had been building a DNA database since 2010. A suburb of 60,000 that borders the northside of Philadelphia, Bensalem now has DNA profiles of 25,000 people.

Sgt. Glenn Vandegrift said 90-95% of the people they ask for a swab voluntarily comply and the department collects about five samples a week. Like Fishers, Bensalem consent forms state that those who agree can ask later that their DNA be taken out of the system — but only about 10 to 15 people a year do so.

Vandegrift said the program has helped reduce burglaries by 42%, partly because it takes serial offenders off the street and solves crimes quickly.

“We used to send DNA to the state police and we’d wait 18 months, but if we got an ID the subject would be long gone,” he said.

Police use the testing for crime scenes but only from clean sources of blood, semen and saliva. About half the city’s profiles were built from crime scene collection and the other half from cheek swabs.

Vandegrift said the database has been useful connecting people arrested for non-violent crimes to more serious offenses, such as retail thief connected to a rape years later.

The database has expanded to 50,000 samples with police from five counties joining in. Philadelphia hasn’t built a database but the regional profiles have helped solve crimes there, Vandegrift said.

Fishers Chief Gebhart said he was confident the rapid testing would be used fairly and would help reduce crime like few tools before have.

"Our goal is to be ahead of crime trends and we feel this is the next innovative advance to help us do just that," he said.

Call IndyStar reporter John Tuohy at 317-444-6418. Email at [email protected] and follow on Twitter and Facebook.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Fishers PD first in Indiana to use rapid DNA, FBI urges caution