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SFPD Puts Rape Victims' DNA Into Database Used To Find Criminals, DA Alleges (arstechnica.com) 132

Posted by BeauHD from the incriminating-evidence dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The San Francisco Police Department's crime lab has been checking DNA collected from sexual assault victims to determine whether any of the victims committed a crime, according to District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who called for an immediate end to the alleged practice. "The crime lab attempts to identify crime suspects by searching a database of DNA evidence that contains DNA collected from rape and sexual assault victims," Boudin's office said in a press release yesterday. Boudin's release denounced the alleged "practice of using rape and sexual assault victims' DNA to attempt to subsequently incriminate them."

"Boudin said his office was made aware of the purported practice last week, after a woman's DNA collected years ago as part of a rape exam was used to link her to a recent property crime," the San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday. The woman "was recently arrested on suspicion of a felony property crime, with police identifying her based on the rape-kit evidence she gave as a victim, Boudin said." That was the only example provided, and Boudin gave few details about the case to protect the woman's privacy. But the database may include "thousands of victims' DNA profiles, with entries over 'many, many years,' Boudin said," according to the Chronicle. "We should encourage survivors to come forward -- not collect evidence to use against them in the future. This practice treats victims like evidence, not human beings. This is legally and ethically wrong," Boudin said.

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the department will investigate and that he is "committed to ending the practice" if Boudin's allegation is accurate. But Scott also said the suspect cited by Boudin may have been identified from a different DNA database. "We will immediately begin reviewing our DNA collection practices and policies... Although I am informed of the possibility that the suspect in this case may have been identified through a DNA hit in a non-victim DNA database, I think the questions raised by our district attorney today are sufficiently concerning that I have asked my assistant chief for operations to work with our Investigations Bureau to thoroughly review the matter and report back to me and to our DA's office partners," Scott said in a statement published by KRON 4. Scott also said, "I am informed that our existing DNA collection policies have been legally vetted and conform with state and national forensic standards," but he noted that "there are many important principles for which the San Francisco Police Department stands that go beyond state and national standards." "We must never create disincentives for crime victims to cooperate with police, and if it's true that DNA collected from a rape or sexual assault victim has been used by SFPD to identify and apprehend that person as a suspect in another crime, I'm committed to ending the practice," Scott said. Even though the alleged practice may already be illegal under California's Victims' Bill of Rights, State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and District 9 Supervisor Hillary Ronen are planning legislation to stop the alleged misuse of DNA.

Wiener said that "if survivors believe their DNA may end up being used against them in the future, they'll have one more reason not to participate in the rape kit process. That's why I'm working with the DA's office to address this problem through state legislation, if needed."
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SFPD Puts Rape Victims' DNA Into Database Used To Find Criminals, DA Alleges More

SFPD Puts Rape Victims' DNA Into Database Used To Find Criminals, DA Alleges

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  • Cops have stats (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @08:11PM (#62271165)
    They are graded just like call center employees. And just like call center employees they will do literally anything to make those stats go up.

    When folks talk about defund the police this is why. Now mind you that's slogan is quite possibly the worst it could be. Outside of a few anarchists nobody wants to completely do away with public safety. And also mind you there's a reason why the media ran with the people pushing that slogan instead of the more sensible ones.

    But maybe now would be a good time to consider if giving nearly unlimited power along with military grade weapons to people meant to serve and protect is really all that good and idea.

    • What surprises me is not that the cops did everything they could to close their case, it's that they got caught doing something that was obviously going to blow back in their faces. I would have expected something more like "parallel construction" . IE, they hide the rape kit dna search, figure out who they're interested in, and then use above-board techniques (like grabbing a starbucks cup out of a trash can) to get the dna in order to match it officially.

      I guess SFPD don't watch police procedural shows on

  • IANAL, but it seems that search warrants are required to collect DNA from an individual. At least that's what all of the best 'Cops' shows seem to indicate. There are exceptions to this, such as someone discarding a drinking cup. Or leaving their DNA inside a rape victim.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      It is necessary to separate attacker and victim DNA in a rape-kit. Of course using the victim DNA for anything beyond that is an act that only complete and utter immoral scum will do.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Agripa ( 139780 )

      IANAL, but it seems that search warrants are required to collect DNA from an individual. At least that's what all of the best 'Cops' shows seem to indicate. There are exceptions to this, such as someone discarding a drinking cup. Or leaving their DNA inside a rape victim.

      Or placing the suspect into a cleaned interrogation room with the heat turned up.

  • Main problem is no punishment (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gurps_npc ( 621217 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @08:17PM (#62271185) Homepage

    We pass laws for crime and put punishments in. We don't simply say "No stealing" Instead we say 4-8 years in prison if you steal.

    We need to do the same laws against government actions.
    It should not be "No discriminating". Instead it should be "If you discriminate, your actions will be reversed AND you are required to spend 1000 hours picking up trash in the worst neighborhood."

    Instead of "No tresspassing without a warrant" it should be "If you tresspass without a warrant, all evidence is disallowed AND you have to personally act as their chauffeur for 12 trips of their choice within 3 months."

    • Re:Main problem is no punishment (Score:5, Funny)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @08:21PM (#62271205) Journal

      We don't simply say "No stealing" Instead we say 4-8 years in prison if you steal.

      Nah, in California we just say, "Don't steal too much."

    • your definition of discriminate might well be "don't give the qualified guy of ethnicity x the job, let's give it to the unqualified y of made up gender z because equal opportunity"

      No thanks. 'Discriminate' has one definition of carefully picking the best choice.

      • Re:Main problem is no punishment (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @09:27PM (#62271413)

        Naw. That's just a bunch of whiny underqualified members of the majority class bitching that some qualified minority got the job. Equal opportunity doesn't mean quotas, it means please consider people other than the majority as long as they're qualified. But people are already bitching loudly about affirmative action because Biden is going to nominate amazingly qualified black women. A lot of dog whistles are already out there implying that the nominee won't be qualified.

        If in the past when you had two qualified candidates and the tie was always broken in favor of the while male, and that wasn't "discrimination", then why when today there are two qualified candidates and the black female is chosen is it suddenly "discrimination"? The only difference is that the bias has changed. Unfortunately we have no way to be color bind without an anonymized application and decision process (no name, no picture, no address, no school affiliation, etc).

        • But I'm not talking white male vs. everyone else. I'm talking qualified women of a couple races also getting snubbed, for quotas sake. And the lazy and unqualified getting the job, then milking things.

          • What are the examples of this? With evidence that the person was less qualified and those giving the job knew it, and it wasn't based on friend-of-a-friend got the jobs or things like that. I've seen no cause celebre here, but there are certainly a lot of "I heard from someone I know that..." stories.

            • If in the past when you had two qualified candidates and the tie was always broken in favor of the while male, and that wasn't "discrimination"

              Any evidence that that tie was ALWAYS broken like that, or even what percentage was broken like that? And if the tie was broken like that is was discrimination, just like picking a black female now is discrimination. To me favoring someone based on their membership of a particular group is the very definition of discrimination. If you have that unusual case of exactly as well qualified people have a policy of tossing a coin then.

              Having quotas is exactly that. It means you have to have a certain amount of pe

              • Re: (Score:3)

                by tragedy ( 27079 )

                Any evidence that that tie was ALWAYS broken like that, or even what percentage was broken like that?

                You make a sort of a point there, but the reason the point is sort of valid actually illustrates the problem. Until 1937, there could not have been a tie between a qualified black candidate for the Supreme court and an equally qualified white candidate because there had never been a black federal judge before then. Ditto for a female one vs. a male until 1949. Of course, some of those early black and female judges were actually pretty extraordinary since they pretty much had to be to break through the compl

            • What are the examples of this? With evidence that the person was less qualified and those giving the job knew it, and it wasn't based on friend-of-a-friend got the jobs or things like that. I've seen no cause celebre here, but there are certainly a lot of "I heard from someone I know that..." stories.

              Not qualified or less qualified? The former is harder to prove and probably more rare. The latter is an easy example case: the most recent Supreme Court selection process. They've literally eliminated 97% of

              • Are you sure it's only 3%? Also, no one ever hires for the most qualified candidate. The most qualified probably doesn't want the job in the first place, and once you've got a high enough tier of candidate deciding between them as to who is best is highly subjective. I've been in hiring committees for administrators in college and there's a lot of arguing about that, and in the end there are a lot of "extras" being considered that aren't really necessary for the job.

                Ie, for Trump appointees, it was clea

                • Are you sure it's only 3%?

                  It might be 5%? I did some googling on how many black female judges currently exist and then numbers floated between 3 and 5%.

        • Re:Main problem is no punishment (Score:5, Interesting)

          by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @10:26PM (#62271521)

          Equal opportunity doesn't mean quotas, it means please consider people other than the majority as long as they're qualified.

          Equal opportunity means everyone is evaluated for the job based on their qualifications. Biden is refusing to evaluate men and women who are not black for the position. Biden is explicitly discriminating on the basis of appearance thereby explicitly rejecting equal opportunity.

          But people are already bitching loudly about affirmative action because Biden is going to nominate amazingly qualified black women.

          No of course not. It's not the outcome that matters it's the process.

          A lot of dog whistles are already out there implying that the nominee won't be qualified.

          If your process is discriminatory and therefore lacks legitimacy naturally you should expect the resulting lack of legitimacy to follow your choice.

          For example if the president were to only consider family members for the job and they all happened to be amazingly qualified everyone would still break out their dog whistles and play the nepotism tune even after an amazingly qualified candidate was selected.

          Process matters not only in selecting the best person for the job but in conveying confidence and legitimacy to the selection. Without integrity in the process there can be no confidence in the outcome.

          If in the past when you had two qualified candidates and the tie was always broken in favor of the while male, and that wasn't "discrimination", then why when today there are two qualified candidates and the black female is chosen is it suddenly "discrimination"?

          Outcomes don't matter only process.

          The only difference is that the bias has changed. Unfortunately we have no way to be color bind without an anonymized application and decision process (no name, no picture, no address, no school affiliation, etc).

          You seem to be arguing that it is impossible to consider people by their work history and qualifications. Therefore the only course of action is to explicitly consider people for a job based on their appearance.

          • And yet every president in most of my lifetime has already created a pre-selected list of court nominees that fit certain qualities before assuming office. Including Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump. Nothing new here with Biden.

            • And yet every president in most of my lifetime has already created a pre-selected list of court nominees that fit certain qualities before assuming office. Including Reagan, both Bushes, and Trump. Nothing new here with Biden.

              The more jurists are selected for their ideology, age and appearance the less legitimacy society has in the courts and government. It doesn't matter who does it or what their political affiliation happens to be.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tragedy ( 27079 )

            Equal opportunity means everyone is evaluated for the job based on their qualifications.

            Yet all three of Trump's Supreme Court appointees was Catholic. Actually, 7 out of 9 of the Supreme Court justices is Catholic. A bit odd considering that Catholics are only a quarter of the US population.

            • Yet all three of Trump's Supreme Court appointees was Catholic. Actually, 7 out of 9 of the Supreme Court justices is Catholic. A bit odd considering that Catholics are only a quarter of the US population.

              What matters is process not outcomes.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by tragedy ( 27079 )

                What matters is process not outcomes.

                You can be pretty sure, in the US, that a fairly large part of that process involved those doing the appointing specifically looking for Judges those doing the appointing consider to be part of a group that opposes abortion.

        • Just before I retired, with roughly 70% of the directors, managers and mid managers female... I was formally taught that the most diverse candidate would break ties at my fortune 100 company. So if the candidates were equally qualified, we would hire minority males over females over males and minority females over white females. Even tho the policy was *well* past the point of equality and you had such obvious problems as minority female director hiring another female of the same minority as manager who

      • How to convince your friends you are smart while making your opponents laugh at your arguments.

        1) Find someone whose view you disagree with, but did not actually say anything that you can prove wrong.

        2) Tell everybody what else THEY think. Make it really stupid and inane.

        3) Attack your OWN made up viewpoint.

        4) Sit around congratulating yourself on defeating the straw man you created.

  • ethics (Score:3)

    by Jodka ( 520060 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @08:23PM (#62271219)

    I believe the correct moral calculus here is 1) the government should have no more power to confiscate the DNA of a rape victim than of any other citizen and 2) The government should have no power to confiscate the DNA of a citizen not suspected of a crime, because that is an unwarranted invasion of privacy.

    So ya, conclusion is, they should not be doing that.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Confiscate? "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

      confiscate, v.- take (a possession, especially land) as a penalty and give it to the public treasury.

    • So to do a rape kit, they swab the victim in order to find traces of the rapist’s DNA. They don’t always find that, but they always find the victim’s DNA in abundance. As a practical matter, they have to sequence the victims DNA in order to compare it to their sample, to filter their DNA signature and see if they’ve collected any DNA from the assailant. They have to keep all that evidence, so that in the future, if the assailant is identified, they can use the evidence against them i

  • If you are the victim of something, and when society offers you no empathy and nothing to deal with that, that evil can fester and make you a victimizer yourself. That anger and fear can drive you to axe your own sense of empathy for others you can't relate to, the oppressed become oppressors.

  • Chesa Boudin (Score:5, Insightful)

    by WaffleMonster ( 969671 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @08:51PM (#62271321)

    This is the same person refusing to prosecute crimes like theft and burglaries leading to soaring crime. His release of career criminals has already gotten multiple people killed. As a result he now faces a recall election he will most likely lose.

    I would not take anything Boudin has to say at face value. If you are concerned about this issue wait for objective findings rather than relying on unsupported musings of a politician before making a conclusion.

  • So victims get a free pass? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pierceelevated ( 5484374 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @10:06PM (#62271481)

    What about *their* victims?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by BitterOak ( 537666 )
      Exactly. I'm not unsympathetic to victims but why should they get a free pass to commit crimes?

      • Depends on the level of crime, we have to outweigh public good and resources versus prosecuting every law violation. If we make it so that people who committed minor crimes are afraid to report rapes, it means society loses out on catching a rapist -- many of whom offend repeatedly, not to mention the victim suffers disproportionately because of justice denied. If we are going to use these methods to catch people, it ought to only be used for very serious crimes.

        • How many robberies does a rape victim get to commit before its worth arresting them? Is that the sort of calculus that the justice system should be carrying out, or is that contrary to the concept of justice?

          • Yes that is exactly the type of calculus we need. I mean, if you want to be some kind of robot and blindly stick to faux-idealist orthodoxy versus stop rapists then you're also doing a type of calculus and differential equations to enable degradation of society. We should have a justice system that optimizes for prevention of extreme suffering. We should offer immunity for low level crimes for victims of rape if they are discovered as a consequence of reporting a rape, just like how prosecution strikes deal

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by tragedy ( 27079 )

        Exactly. I'm not unsympathetic to victims but why should they get a free pass to commit crimes?

        Sure, and what about the people who don't wear a tracking collar all the time? Why should they get a free pass to commit crimes? So, obviously everyone should be forced to wear a tracking collar. Also, it would be convenient for the police if everyone were shackled all the time too. Much harder to commit crimes that way. For that matter, if everyone were just kept locked in a cell except when they go to work, where they can be chained to their workstation, think how much crime could be eliminated.

      • They shouldn't be building a DNA database at all. They are not sufficiently reputable to be trusted with it.

        Simply being in the database will lead to false accusations, because there will be cases in which the best match in the database is used to target people for investigation, even if they aren't actually a good match.

    • Re:So victims get a free pass? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @11:03PM (#62271595)

      If someone commits a petty theft crime, it would mean they would fear reporting rape for fear of being caught for that. That means society loses out on catching a rapist, not to mention the victim suffers disproportionately because of justice denied. If we are going to use these methods to catch people, it ought to only be used for very serious crimes.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by LubosD ( 909058 )

        Do they really collect DNA evidence for petty theft crimes? TFA mentions a felony, so I suppose there is a certain threshold.

      • And how often would that be likely to occur? How many rapes would go unreported, that would have been reported otherwise, because the victim was afraid of being caught for some crime they committed?

        How many injustices are you willing to allow in order to prevent maybe one?

    • Putting rape victims' DNA in a database intended to track offenders is wrong, even if they might commit a crime later on. So might everyone else, but we don't take everyone's DNA - for good reason.

    • You're right, what about *their* victims. We should DNA test everyone. You get up first. You have nothing to hide so nothing to worry about citizen right?

      Or are you just hoping you don't get raped and therefore don't get your DNA hoovered up too?

  • Recognize when the cat is out of the bag (Score:3)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @11:26PM (#62271629)
    There are a very wide range of ways for government to identify people now, from DNA to online activity, to face recognition, and likely a wide variety of methods that are not well know by the general public. Rather than concentrating on one specific form of ID, I think as a society we need to decide how much ability to track people we want the government to poses, and in what ways and under what conditions they can use that information.

    There is a security vs privacy tradeoff, and a trust of government question. I believe that trying to solve this sort of problem piecemeal is inefficient, as technology moves faster than the laws can change. We need to regulate the outcomes, not the methods.

    When methods are allowed, they need to be public and studied through real peer review. As an example there is an often cited number that DNA false matches are only a one in a trillion. In the first place that is absurd - no laboratory work can be carried out with that low an error rate. Also its not good enough for broad sweeps - if you check a million samples of DNA a year in the country, you will get hundreds of false matches.
  • Time and place people! That’s fucked up. And the cops wonder why the public doesn’t trust them. Criminals should be punished, but talk about kicking someone when they are down.
    • Exactly.
    • Have you thought that through? You're basically saying that having been the victim of a crime should mean being allowed to victimize others with impunity. How many robberies should a rape victim be allowed to commit? How many times does someone have to get robbed before they're allowed to commit rape?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        How many robberies should a rape victim be allowed to commit?

        0, But they should Not be putting victim's profiles in the database, because this would give victims a reason to not report crime b/c the victim can fear the investigation will be used to put them in prison.

  • Realistically? (Score:3)

    by sabbede ( 2678435 ) on Wednesday February 16, 2022 @08:33AM (#62272387)
    How many crime victims are going to decide not to report it because they are planning to commit crimes in the future and don't want to get caught?

    Hell, it sounds like they didn't even bother to verify which database the match came from before running to the media. How about finding out if a practice exists before committing to end it?

  • I was under the impression that DNA could be used to identify close relatives of that DNA involved in a crime. What about the cases where we absolutely want to check relatives of these victims against DNA evidence? It could even HELP in those victim's cases.

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