Crime Lab Keeps Cranking Out “Hits”
The Oregon State Police crime lab has led the county in DNA testing, recently recording their 1,000th hit of matching DNA from evidence to a person’s DNA that is stored in a statewide database of people.
In this 1,000th hit, the evidence showed that the police’s suspect in the crime actually was not the person linked to clothing with DNA evidence left at the scene. The police checked the DNA before going forward with the arrest, and the DNA results also pointed police to someone they had not considered.
DNA unit supervisor Brian Ostrom says DNA results exonerate suspects about 20 percent of the time, and 80 percent reconfirm police work. However, the crime lab is experiencing a backlog of evidence to process, which some state police attribute to recent budget cuts.
Since November 2003, backlogged evidence has risen from 110 cases to 640 cases. In addition, the crime lab uses a DNA database to troll for matches with evidence, and currently 20,000 profiles are ready but not yet entered into the DNA database.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Oregonian (03/01/06) P. A1; Rose, Joseph .