Saturday, July 17, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Albany's Deadly DNA-Law Delay
Posted: 12:18 AM, June 24, 2010
DNA is one of the most powerful tools of modern crime-fighting -- but New York lawmakers have been reluctant to let law-enforcement officials use its full potential.
Police now routinely gather DNA evidence at crime scenes, or from such violent crimes as rape. If a perp's DNA is "on file" in a DNA database, law enforcers can rapidly identify and apprehend a criminal before he strikes again.
In other words, building the database is vital. But it doesn't have to include every one to be effective: Other states' experiences show that a database of significant numbers of career criminals -- habitual lawbreakers, including minor as well as major offenses -- is hugely valuable.
The federal government leads the way, requiring a DNA sample upon arrest, while 20-plus states require DNA sampling of all suspects arrested for violent felonies. But in Albany, a bill mandating DNA sampling upon arrest is mired in debate in the Senate and was pronounced dead on arrival in the Assembly.
New York requires DNA sampling only of those convicted of a felony and a few sex-related misdemeanors -- which leaves most criminals still exempt after conviction. As a result, the state DNA databank is too small to be effective, holding "fingerprints" of only about 15 percent of the criminal population.
That's why 20,000 DNA forensic profiles, retrieved from New York crime scenes, are languishing unmatched. The unsolved crimes range from robbery and burglary to rape and murder.
Legislative gridlock has deprived New York's law enforcement of this potentially powerful tool. In what's now an annual ritual, the Assembly is again considering only a minor expansion of the state's DNA database.
In 2006, the Legislature yielded to a decade of pressure and passed a significant expansion of the DNA databank. But since the state still only mandates DNA sampling for certain convictions, the majority of known criminals still get to maintain their "DNA anonymity."
Yet even that expansion made a big difference. In New York, from 1994 to 2007, DNA put a name on 4,142 crime-scene samples. About a third of these matches were in 2007 alone, the first year after DNA sampling was expanded. In 2008 and 2009, the cumulative total of hits rose to 7,980 -- an incredible 300 percent jump in crime-scene matches over the whole preceding decade.
The debate on privacy is over. State and federal courts have rejected challenges to mandatory-sampling laws, because DNA from a saliva swab is merely a biological fingerprint revealing only a person's identity.
Here are a few terrifying examples of how shielding violent offenders from providing DNA allowed them to prey on innocent victims:
* John Royster's conviction for turnstile jumping in Manhattan was too minor to take his DNA. But if that conviction had required a DNA sample, Royster would've been arrested three months later, after his first rape. Instead, DNA anonymity gave him the opportunity to rape three more women, leaving two permanently brain-damaged. The third died.
* Isaac Jones waged a reign of terror in New York City, raping and attacking women. He wasn't apprehended for six years because an earlier conviction didn't require a DNA sample.
* Chester Dewayne Turner, arrested in Los Angeles for assault with a firearm, was set free for lack of evidence. No DNA was taken. Over the next 15 years, he was arrested 21 times before his DNA was taken. It matched the DNA evidence found on 12 rape-murder victims.
These women were victims of preventable crimes. If Turner's DNA had been taken, 11 of his murder victims might be alive today. They were attacked and killed because of restrictions on taking DNA. (See dnasaves.org for more heartbreaking cases.) Also, David Jones, the man wrongfully convicted of three of these murders, would not have served 11 years in prison.
Twenty thousand stalkers are operating in New York under a shield of anonymity. It's time to take DNA after all convictions. Better yet, to provide swift justice for the guilty and innocent alike, the legislature should follow the feds and take DNA upon arrest. Legislators insist it's only a matter of time before restrictions are lifted. They should do it now. When it comes to restricting DNA, delay is deadly.
Gerald J. Turetsky is chairman of the Committee on Civil and Criminal Justice.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/albany_deadly_dna_law_delay_kerVkAq4LtpgO7CvEbFBmL
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/albany_deadly_dna_law_delay_kerVkAq4LtpgO7CvEbFBmL
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Medical marijuana too dangerous, costly
By GERALD TURETSKY
Bills in the state Senate and Assembly to legalize medical marijuana are set for a major, last-minute push. If they are passed, New Yorkers are in for serious financial and health problems. Common sense dictates before the Legislature moves forward with such a high-risk program, thorough hearings must be held.
Marijuana is not a safe drug. Over time, damage to users' lungs and brains are measurable and significant. Marijuana is widely regarded as a "gateway drug" that introduces children to the drug culture. Most kids who become addicts move on to other more potent drugs. Although most who experiment with marijuana do not become addicted, young people who avoid it altogether tend not to become drug addicts of any kind.
Contrary to the allure of a potential huge new source of tax revenue from the legal sale of cannabis, legalizing medical marijuana will shift the burden of monitoring its safe manufacture and distribution to the state Health Department. The federal Food and Drug Administration will not participate in testing and monitoring the safety of an illegal drug.
The additional cost to state agencies and local police and health departments throughout New York to regulate the distribution to legitimate medical users will be expensive and mostly fruitless.
How do we know? By looking at the failed experiments of legalizing marijuana in Los Angeles.
Samples of medical marijuana purchased at dispensaries in L.A. have contained up to 1,600 times the legal limit for insecticide poison. In New York, marijuana frequently comes laced with angel dust or small quantities of arsenic for added kick, as well as various crop protective poisons. Los Angeles officials say they found using medical marijuana purchased at medical dispensaries is like sprinkling insecticide on a salad and eating it.
Marijuana is has other health risks. THC levels vary greatly. In recent years its potency has risen by up to 600 percent and, in some cases, 1,500 percent. These are dangerous levels, especially for people with weakened immune deficiency systems, heart conditions and psychiatric illnesses.
The pending marijuana bills do not require a prescription from a licensed physician in good standing. The Los Angeles experience is predictable. Most prescriptions are dispensed without physical examinations or diagnosis of a medical condition. The Senate and Assembly bills provide little guidance or restrictions on what constitute a valid medical condition. Medical marijuana dispensaries will proliferate quickly. Many will be near schools, parks and inner-city neighborhoods where illegal drug consumption is already a problem. Count on an explosion of distribution networks that will attract addicted drug users. They will bring myriad crime problems with them.
Los Angeles is in the process of trying to close down hundreds of these so-called medical dispensaries. New York is on the verge of welcoming them with open arms.
The state Legislature is moving quietly to legalize medical marijuana on the run, without proper study and analysis to eliminate the known dangers. This is not prudent or wise. A rush to legalize pot without public debate is just ignoring the dangers and hoping for the best.
Skip medical marijuana. New Yorkers will be safer, and it will save money, too.
Gerald Turetsky is chairman of the Manhattan-based Respect For Law Alliance Inc.'s committee on civil and criminal justice.
Take DNA Upon Arrest (originally published June 14, 2010)
Take DNA Upon Arrest
published online 06-14-2010
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?id=36047
http://www.brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?id=36047
New York’s civil liberties advocates are manning the barricades in their last-ditch battle against expanding the state’s DNA database. DNA’s opponents are fighting to stop the identification of thousands of repeat offenders (nearly 20,000 by last count) who have committed violent crimes and left their DNA at crime scenes. They cannot be identified because most criminals are not required to provide a DNA sample even after conviction.
DNA’s detractors argue passionately that the risk of exposing the DNA profiles of those arrested or found guilty of misdemeanors pushes the invasion of privacy envelope too far. Their assertion that they are protecting individual constitutional and privacy rights against further government intrusion is way off the mark. In fact, they expose thousands of future victims of preventable crime to needless brutality.
Concerns that DNA sampling in criminal cases violates privacy have been conclusively rebutted by science. Specifically, DNA samples from inert (“junk”) DNA retrieved from a saliva swab provide only identification in the form of a “biological” fingerprint. Federal and state appellate courts have found that taking a DNA sample upon arrest raises no constitutional issues.
DNA is another highly accurate form of identification that is analogous to taking fingerprints upon arrest. Seven million DNA profiles have been taken nationwide without a single case of improper disclosure. New York, like most states, provides criminal penalties to prevent such misuse.
DNA databanks are rapidly expanding in many states. New York provides for taking DNA samples from convicted felons and a small number of sex related misdemeanors. But this excludes 54 percent of convictions. Many states are now following the federal government policy of taking DNA samples upon arrest. More than 20 states now require DNA collection upon arrest for violent felonies. Expanding DNA collection from all convicted offenders, or better yet upon arrest, is vital to expand DNA databanks and maximize their effectiveness.
A prime example is the startling contrast between New York’s DNA databank and Great Britain’s DNA databank. In the decade prior to 2006, when New York had even more restrictive limitations on the collection of DNA samples, its DNA databank provided about as many “hits” as Great Britain (with no restrictions on DNA sampling upon arrest) gets every 10 days.
In 2007, the year after New York allowed DNA collection from all convicted felons, DNA “hits” increased by more than a third of the cumulative total from the prior 10 years. In 2008 and 2009, the cumulative total of “hits” rose to 7,980 — an astounding 300 percent increase in crime scene matches over the prior decade.
DNA collection after felony or misdemeanor convictions (or better yet, following the federal policy of taking DNA samples upon arrest for every crime) is essential to provide swift justice for the accused and exoneration for the innocent. Most criminals are arrested more often for misdemeanors than felonies, by a ratio of 10 to one. And after many felony arrests, charges are often plea-bargained down to misdemeanors. This is especially true for sex offenses involving children, where parents prefer a guilty plea to a traumatic trial.
The earlier a recidivist offender is identified for his prior crimes and brought to justice, the fewer future victims will be added to his scorecard. Across the country, states that are collecting DNA upon arrest will be able to identify tens of thousands of forensic DNA profiles retrieved from unsolved crime scenes that had been languishing without a match. New York’s legislature should join them now and remove all restrictions on DNA collection.
Requiring DNA to be collected upon arrest is supported by the New York State Law Enforcement Council, representing New York’s law enforcement agencies, including New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Unfortunately, although the DNA upon arrest bill is under consideration in the state Senate, the same bill was killed instantly upon its submission to the state Assembly Codes Committee.
A good compromise for the legislature in this session is Governor David Paterson’s proposed DNA expansion bill requiring DNA samples from all those convicted of a crime, felonies and misdemeanors alike. This bill will save thousands of potential victims of preventable crime, many of them among New York’s most vulnerable groups — women, children and the elderly.
Legislators, whose first duty is to protect public safety, can still spare these soon-to-become victims the agony of serious injury, torture and sometimes death. Which New York state legislator will step up and look a mother in the eye to apologize for not protecting her child from a vicious attack that could have been prevented? How do you explain to grieving parents that it was just politics that prevented a simple vote in the New York Assembly and Senate to expand the DNA databank?
Gerald J. Turetsky,
Chairman Committee on
Civil and Criminal Justice
Respect for Law Alliance Inc.
445 Park Ave., 9th floor
New York, NY 10022
Phone: (212) 486-0543
Fax: (212) 486-1378
Email: ag@rfla.us
Website: rfla.us
Take DNA When You Can (Originally Published April 9, 2006)
Published: April 9, 2006
In an effort to protect the privacy of criminals, New York statutes place severe restrictions on DNA use as a crime-fighting tool. Whether we continue or eliminate these restrictions is of life and death importance for New Yorkers.
New York State greatly improved its DNA analysis and processing system as part of the effort to identify remains of the victims of 9/11. But although this system has incalculable potential to solve crime, New York has opted for DNA privacy over safety. The result: legal restrictions shield even the most dangerous offenders from DNA identification and apprehension, extending their violent careers indefinitely.
A case in point: New York has spent millions of federal dollars to eliminate backlogs in processing DNA rape kits. In 2003, about 17,000 rape files produced more than 15,000 DNA profiles of rapists, including serial rapists and murderers. State legislation now permits many of these violent offenders to be charged under ''John Doe'' DNA profile indictments, a necessary innovation to prevent criminals from running out the clock under the statute of limitations. This need for the ''John Doe'' indictments results from the police's inability, due to privacy concerns, to take DNA at the time of arrest.
The way the system works now, no matter how many times these rapists (16,000 or more at last count) are arrested for other crimes, most will not be tied to their rapes and murders because they typically plead only to ''nondesignated'' charges, and state law does not require criminals to give DNA samples for convictions in these cases. Most will serve short sentences and be released to continue their mayhem simply because their DNA isn't in the state DNA databank.
The argument in favor of protecting DNA privacy of people who commit crimes, whether felonies or misdemeanors, is illusory. The saliva swab sampling takes a microscopic amount of DNA, called junk DNA; like a fingerprint, it can be matched to an individual, but it doesn't provide biological information. Civil liberties advocates and lawyers who defend criminals have prevented an expansion of the state DNA databank by arguing the junk DNA sample can somehow divulge other protected information. Scientists have concluded that this is untrue.
Of the 633,000 sets of fingerprints that have been provided by arrestees, about two-thirds belonged to people who had prior convictions. Yet only 18,000 DNA samples (less than 5 percent) were taken from these prior offenders. Even more disturbing, more than 50 percent of those convicted of felonies and 94 percent of those convicted of misdemeanors after arrest are still excluded from DNA sampling.
New York's DNA index is one of the most restricted in the nation. When compared with the state fingerprint databank of 3.3 million, the DNA index probably includes fewer than 10 percent of the state's criminal offenders. That's why it took New York 10 years to achieve the same result that Britain's unrestricted DNA database gets every 10 days -- about 1,700 ''hits'' or DNA matches.
If New York, like Britain, required a DNA sample of saliva upon arrest, as it does with fingerprints, a large number of fugitive serial rapists and murderers would be identified. Arming police with DNA, now widely accepted as the state-of-the art fingerprint of the 21st century, this powerful investigative tool would spare thousands of potential victims each year. It would also quickly exonerate those wrongly accused or convicted of crimes.
Albany's continued failure to remove restraints on DNA sampling has resulted in thousands of people needlessly becoming victims, like those of the serial rapist and murderer John Royster. Mr. Royster's brutal eight-day rampage in June 1996 in the metropolitan area ended, the police say, only after three attacks and a murder. (He was eventually convicted of two brutal assaults and one murder.) If his conviction three months earlier for a misdemeanor for jumping a turnstile had required a DNA sample, three of his victims could probably have been saved.
Gerald J. Turetsky is the chairman of the committee on civil and criminal justice at the Respect for Law Alliance.
Federalize Airport Rules (Originally published November 12, 2001)
By Gerald J. Turetsky
Monday, November 12, 2001
Federalizing airport security operations would be a serious mistake. Such a government takeover would demonstrate congressional resolve to take swift action to fix a system badly in need of repair. But as reassuring as this fast fix might seem in the short run, it would be anything but fast in providing a solution to the problem, which is that we have virtually no effective screening of passengers and luggage at our nation's airports. The federalization of airport security would be slow, the government's replacement of unskilled personnel controversial and cumbersome, and its impact on improving security largely ineffective.
Federalization by creating a vast federal police force to inspect passengers and luggage will confront us with a potent political issue: What do you do with the 30,000 people now pretending to do the job? Most of them are low skilled, low paid and too poorly motivated to accomplish the challenging task that is, to minimize the opportunity for terrorist hijackers to turn commercial airliners into death traps for passengers in the sky and flying missiles for people on the ground. Most lack the education and skills to be upgraded, but this reality would be disregarded as callous. The impact on their families would take precedence over more mundane issues, like the skill and vigilance required of people who have to match wits for eight hours a day with dedicated and determined terrorists well disguised as normal people of good will.
Government's answer for tackling such sensitive issues is simple: take the safest, least controversial, politically correct course today and hope for the best tomorrow. Once the existing work force is federalized and they receive lifetime employment at substantially higher salaries and superior benefits, the only challenge left will be how to squeeze round pegs into square holes. Well, why not just make the holes larger?
The egalitarian principle that, with the right training, everyone is capable of doing every job equally well, is firmly entrenched in government. If they are unqualified now they may still be qualifiable or at least potentially qualifiable. These are not new terms for government. These are euphemisms that substitute good intentions but mean nothing when terrorists' intentions are life-and-death matters.
Where does that leave us? With the need to figure out what went wrong with the existing system and what other countries have done to make their airport security programs work. Many European countries, for instance, have discarded failed nationalized security systems and substituted government partnerships with the private sector. What we have now in the United States is a security screening system run by the airlines without any meaningful government oversight.
For a new airport security system to be effective, it must rely on the skill and vigilance of the airport security staff and their supervisors, who must maintain a constant vigil over millions of passengers and thousands of ground crew and support staff who service the planes and airport grounds. We can recruit airport security personnel who will meet strict standards with better pay and equip them with better training.
But past experience suggests that the Senate's approach a national federal police force for airport security is overkill. We tried that at federal facilities nationwide 30 years ago and found it was not effective. Manning fixed posts with overqualified police resulted in lowered performance. After a decade of problems, we abandoned that program and contracted out the function with disastrous results, not unlike what we have at the airports today.
A system that works effectively can best be accomplished quickly and at the lowest cost through the competitive system that works throughout the private sector. All we need is the right set of incentives that puts quality before cost. Financial rewards for contractors, including bonuses, must be based on meeting rigorous standards for security, with suitable financial penalties for failing to meet those standards. This would include swift termination where the failure is frequent or serious something wholly incompatible with government procurement or ineffective government employees.
Our government-regulated, privately managed airplane maintenance system has given us the safest planes in the sky. If the money and determination are there, we can also buy the best quality air transportation security system. Government's most effective contribution is to do that which it does best set the standards and provide effective oversight to assure the flying public that we have an efficient security system in place.
Gerald J. Turetsky, a former prosecutor and senior government administrator, is currently working on a book: "Battling the Bureaucracy From Within."
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