Chief.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: Good morning. Superintendent Hillard is going to be a little late today. Probably you know there is quite a bit of activity going on in Chicago and in Illinois in the John Wayne Gacy case. But he does promise to try to join us here.

I'm going to report on the crime scene investigations working group. Since the last full Commission hearing we've had two meetings; one was held in Washington and one in San Antonio. We have three more meetings set, and I will talk about those a little bit later.

But let me just try to capsulize what we did in Washington, and then San Antonio. I negligently wasn't there so my partners took over for me. But we will bring you up to date on the good minutes taken there.

In the Washington meeting we sat and tried to figure out the form the subcommittee was going to take, or the working group was going to take, and we decided that one of the best processes would be to do some site visits to see how local police departments, whether they were metro or rural or somewhere in-between, were handling their issues.

So when we met in Washington we started with my own department and Chief Ramsey's department and visited with the detectives. And we had some people come in and talk about crime scene processing, and we went to the lab and our drying room and saw how some of the evidence was being handled in a major city, and I think had some pretty good discussions.

Some of the issues that came out of there identified several issues. None the least of which is the minimum level of DNA competency. The vast difference in DNA understanding among police officers was discussed.

An individual's ability to identify, preserve, and collect biological evidence is dependent on numerous factors, the most important of which we think is training. Training, however, is obviously contingent on size and available resources.

It was concluded, however, that victims or potential victims are not protected equally throughout the country by this technology because law enforcement competency on this issue vary so greatly.

And we even used a recent example in Washington D.C., when we were looking at an older unsolved case there and looking at the crime scene photographs. In the crime scene photographs we saw a toothpick that was at the scene. And it turned out that the toothpick was not picked up and made part of the evidence. In retrospect, we think that the toothpick wasn't there but for, we think, kind of referred to as a gangster pick. Some of the thugs keep a toothpick in their mouth, and that may have very well have provided the saliva and DNA evidence that it would have been nice to have in that case.

But that highlighted to us, at least in Washington, how people just may not have thought, the investigators, the relevance of the toothpick. And I think it was interesting in our working group as we talked about that, most of the people shook their heads and said, gee, I wouldn't have thought of that either.

So it just, again, highlights what we need to do to educate our detectives and first responders what needs to be done.

We had decided it should be the goal of the working group and hopefully the Commission to establish and promote a minimum level of DNA understanding and competency across the country so that investigative advantages are utilized, whether the victim of a crime lives in downtown Chicago or Washington D.C. or rural Wyoming. But we have a lot of work to do to bring our detectives up to speed on that.

We also talked quite a bit about the old cold cases and thought that the development of guidelines to help law enforcement officers to use DNA and the DNA database to solve old, unsolved cases was an important goal. Given the ability that DNA provides to solve cases with biological evidence that were previously thought unsolvable, police should be educated about the possibilities that DNA and DNA databases hold, as well as the procedure for analyzing and investigating old, cold cases.

I can tell you that the Washington Metropolitan Police Department has had a cold case squad for some time, but in trying to look at their protocols I can tell you that the protocols aren't built around using biological evidence. They are approaching the cold cases in the good old fashion way; go back through them, look at the file, re-interview individuals who may be involved in it. And I'm convinced that they are not yet using the technology that could be developed.

We want to suggest that we would develop guidelines in relatively short order for the Commission's approval.

The next area that's somewhat related to that is the whole training and education. Clearly the training across the United States was discussed and there are significant holes in the way the identification, preservation, and collection of the DNA evidence was discussed. And it ties into the whole dynamic of law enforcement training, education, and resources, and what is available and what isn't.

Based on those type of discussions, again we said we wanted to do some site visits to see how departments who have had some success where it was known to us in doing cold cases training, again irrespective of the size of the department but wanting to be very sensitive to the fact that this is the training issue, the lack of technology, the lack of a mind set in this age of technology is rather universal across the United States and it's not necessarily confined to any one size department.

In that regard, that is a when San Antonio was picked to, again, try to spread ourselves out through the United States and have some different officers come in to talk about what they are doing.

When we met in San Antonio, we began the development of a cold case guidelines and discussed the training and education issues, particularly as they pertain to rural police departments. But I want to continue to emphasize the problem we have in our major cities. Again, I readily pointed out some of the shortcomings in the Washington Metropolitan Police Department, frankly as everybody else in the nation keeps pointing out to us.

Superintendent Hillard has, I think, talked about on more than several occasions about the need even in the places as sophisticated as the Chicago Police Department the need to have these guidelines.

Two officers currently using DNA to solve old cases were invited to the meeting and talked about their efforts. Captain Joe Riga from Buffalo PD and James Caruso from San Antonio PD testified about the procedures they followed to identify cases which may be appropriate for DNA testing and subsequent reopening.

Much of the meeting was spent developing an outline for the guideline, identifying the target audience, goals, and processes to be followed.

Concerning the training issues, Dr. Lee Colwell testified before the group about the state of law enforcement training or lack thereof. Dr. Colwell is from Arkansas, has extensive experience with the FBI. He highlighted the training and education issues in rural jurisdictions. And I wasn't going to spend much time on that here, because that is a handout document, the minutes of that meeting that you may want to peruse.

There were a couple of other issues at the first Washington meeting, and then the second meeting that Chris introduces us to the concept that maybe the document or the instructions, the guidelines, would be developed, we would develop would work very well on a CD-ROM. So that continues to be the thought process that we have to move towards that.

And at the San Antonio meeting there was quite a bit of discussion on the content of the report. And again, since I wasn't there Jan is going to share with us some of the items we brought up on the content.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: I don't have the actual outline, but one thing I would ask Chris is at that meeting we did have a brainstorming session where we created some content or listed the content of a variety of different chapters that we expected to have in our report. So I really can't give you much detail on that, but I hoped that would be -- Chris, would it be possible that that could be reduced to something that could be handed out?

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: It's already been reduced and it's just a matter of putting it in a proper format.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: I think that is very important because it does give us a basis.

One of the large parts of the discussion was the degree to which our work does or does not overlap with the crime scene working group or TWG that NIJ is sponsoring. And Sue Ballou from Montgomery County was at that meeting in part to represent the group.

It was an interesting discussion because we had originally said, well, that group is going to develop a guideline and all we really have to do are some recommendations. And by the end of our discussion I think we had changed our approach and we did think that it was important for this particular working group to come out with something formal.

But I think that the outline that Chris may have -- and you may have some comments on that, Chris -- will be illuminating as to where we are going to go.

One of the things we talked about for our next meeting was that we plan to go to Orange County California because in that jurisdiction there is a very active old cold case unit run by prosecutor's office. And I think at that meeting I will also make some suggestions as to who from our more rural part of California agencies we might be able to bring in to bring some balance to that particular meeting.

Chris, do you have any thoughts about the content of the work?

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Yes. I have in my hands what you just referred to. Really, what we did was we talked first about, from a substantive standpoint, who were we trying to address. From the standpoint of not just who investigated these cases, but who would initiate these cases.

We talked a lot about the way these cases come into the system. And quite frankly, it's not just a matter of police departments or individual detectives working on their own mission to look into these cases. But oftentimes they're suggestions generated by victims, families of victims. That was the case in Buffalo, New York case that brought our attention to Captain Riga.

Sometimes there are victim organizations, et cetera.

So they can be initiated in a number of different ways. So we had to consider that in the context of how the police departments or how individual investigators are going to deal with those reports, deal with those initiations.

We talked about the introduction and the extent to which an introduction should really include kind of an analysis of why we are in a different position than we were before. Why it is that we should empower law enforcement officers to go into these old cases. We are in a fundamentally different situation now, more dynamic, as a result of the DNA database.

It didn't make sense before to do the DNA testing in a non-suspect unsolved case. Well, now in the context of the database it's a highly relevant proposition, and one worth pursuing.

So we wanted to provide some educational functions there, why things are different and why we should pursue this.

Again, we talked about how cases should be initiated and we talked about the process itself.

Issues that will come up, such as the first thing you want to do is look at your statute of limitations on a particular case. Obviously if the statute of limitations has run and you're in a jurisdiction other than Florida, for example, that still has statute of limitations on cases with biological samples, that is probably a case you don't want to pursue.

We talked and just began to list the different issues and investigative matters that will come up. For example, what is the state of your witness availability, what is the state of the defendant or suspect, if you have any suspect at all, availability. Issues like that.

We also talked about perhaps creating a chapter that talks about the development of a unit, but also recognize the fact that in many departments they are not going to have the number of officers to create a unit, would also need to develop a system that works well as for individual officers, not just departments big enough for units.

We talked about needing to provide a chapter which talks about the contamination issues, the scientific issues. To give you some examples we received. And during the meeting, Robin Wilson presented some of the research that she had done on the state of training and education on some of these issues. And one of the things that we got out of that was some information from some of the national law enforcement agencies.

And in looking at some of their protocols and some their guidelines, they even mentioned in their most recent updates things like plastic bags, packaging things in plastic bags, which we immediately recognized as an area to be looked at and educate law enforcement agencies and updating law enforcement agencies on issues like contamination and storage.

Another example is the issue of using staples in an evidence collection. A new law enforcement officer may well have been trained appropriately on the issue of stapling and the fact that you shouldn't use staples when you're collecting evidence and packaging evidence.

However, if he is investigating an old cold case, he may well get a package that has been stapled. He may well get a package that is a plastic bag. And as such, may not be aware of the old issues, even though he has been trained appropriately to do it in a way that prevents contamination, were other issues. So the need to educate law enforcement officers along the scientific aspect is also important.

Important victim issues. Also, how to deal with victims when you're investigating an old case like that or victims families.

Again, those are some of the substantive issues we began to talk about and began to outline with an eye towards developing recommendations that will allow law enforcements officer, not just to identify, but then proceed in investigating these old cases.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: I think it's no small irony to bring up and not overplay the Gacy case today, that here the department and a lot of people expending the resources to look for victims in a case where the offender has already been executed by the state. And as I understand that issue was brought to light by a retired detective as well as one of the crime commissions.

So you never know where this is going to come from, nor do you know how much of the resources you're going to have to spend giving -- families apparently will have the closure on this case. And even concerning the statute of limitation issues, I think it's legitimate to talk about even if a statute has run on non-suspect cases, whether there is some moral or ethical value identifying the offender that is no different from publicizing sex offender names and lists. So that if you could identify the person who matches DNA in what was previously a non-suspect case for which the statute has run, do we have some type of obligation to do that to alert the people that he was the sexual assaulter.

But that is where we are at on that. We do have, as I said, several more meetings. Jan mentioned 11, 12, January in Orange County; April 9 in D.C.; June 28, 29 at a site to be determined. And Lisa informed us that we've tried to set aside some time in August to perhaps meet.

And, Chris, you also wanted to discuss two other items. One would be the English experience.

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Correct. Thank you, Chief.

One of the other issues that we talked about was taking a look at the system in the United Kingdom. And since the United Kingdom uses DNA from a more investigative standpoint than the United States does at this stage, we thought that there may be some value in looking at the data that is currently being generated in the United Kingdom about how the DNA database effects the investigative process.

How does the fact that the UK has a more dense database population, that they not only have a larger database but that they apply it in more crimes from a criminal investigative standpoint. How does that change the law enforcement investigative dynamic.

Is there something to be said from the standpoint when investigating a case where there is a biological sample by doing the DNA testing first and running it through the database. Is that a more efficient, effective way to proceed than some of the more traditional investigative techniques. It's not the sacrifice or the omission or the official investigative techniques, but is there a way in a case using this system more efficiently and effectively that we should look at it and perhaps compare it to how we do things in the United States.

Obviously there are significant differences in the system that would have to be accounted for. And as such, what we may consider is some form of comparative analysis taking a look at perhaps Florida, Virginia, California. But we thought there may be some value to that.

We talked to a representative from the research forum, asked them to draw up a proposal for some study like that and see how it changes the investigative dynamic.

We got back a one page proposal. Quite frankly, the numbers came in a little high on the proposal, 85,000 to $100,000 to do that research.

I think at this stage, if the Commission feels that that is an appropriate pursuit at that stage, to continue for us to investigate the possibility of doing that study, we could go back and talk to the folks in the UK. Talk to Dr. Werrett and see what information they do have and perhaps narrow the scope of the study we want to do and bring the numbers down a little bit.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: I went over there and toured and attended a number of programs where he presented his data and talked to a number of those people.

One of the things that he emphasized -- and I think it was in the presentation he had in Chicago as well -- is that the number one thing that they focused on was turnaround time.

In other words, it might be very worthwhile to interview the police units that do contracting with forensic science services to see what their satisfaction is and what they did well.

One of the things that we'd be willing to do in New York and -- I'm pretty sure I can speak for the Police Commissioner on this because we were thinking of doing this very idea for less money than you're proposing -- would be to take a unit in the New York City Police Department, identify a precinct where they have a high rate of burglaries, which is the main thing that they are doing so effectively in Great Britain, and try to replicate what they are doing in Great Britain.

In other words, turning it around within two weeks, attacking the scene for biological evidence.

And I'm sure if the Commission is interested in that, the Police Commissioner just last week indicated that he is very interested and excited in doing that kind of program. So amazingly enough, I think I can make that kind of representation.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Who did the research in England?

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: The forensic science services itself. And really what has happened is, quite simply, they have been going through the process long enough that they are now starting to generate that kind of data. So they are in the stages of starting to analyze the effects of the database system.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Do we have the product of that research?

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: We don't. Dr. Werrett gave a presentation both to the research and development group and at the conference where some of that information was in fact provided. He has indicated his willingness to get us his presentation materials.

What we would like to do is really see what more they have besides what was presented there, to see what we would have to work with. And then if we decide to pursue that study and create essentially what is a cost/benefit analysis, I think then we can start to look into what kind of potential pilot programs and what kind of analysis we can do here in the United States.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: I have two problems with that. One has to do with the need to have a database. I'm wondering how you would try to replicate the UK experience if you don't have DNA samples from the target population in New York.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: Well, what Chris was pointing out, the primary benefit is the scene-to-scene case.

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: I didn't mean to infer an emphasize on scene-to-scene.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: One of the key benefits in terms of the investigation are the linkages from scene-to-scene cases.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: Because I think you're going to be limited in your ability to replicate it because you're really not in the same situation.

The second point has to do with the, I thought, most interesting part of Dave Werrett's talk, and that was the information they had developed about the age of entry people into the life of crime aspect.

I think that data is going to be extremely critical if we are going to ever have a hope of expanding the scope of the database in a responsible way. Because we can provide what really isn't available, hasn't been available as far as I can see here, we don't have that data and it hampers our ability to give informative reports of our effort to plan the database into really a viable effort.

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Again, I certainly see the Commission addressing a need to essentially address the value of that data in the future. And finding, perhaps, potentially recommending a way to capture all this data clearly is very valuable for a lot of things.

And that would be another benefit of perhaps doing the study in the UK, so that we can not only take a look at the changing investigative dynamic, but also see the benefits of the data they are generating. And see where it improves our data once it gets here.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Is there any other comments to this?

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: At this stage of the game it's certainly nothing we need to take a vote on. When you get an opportunity, if you would like to talk to me about it. We are not at the point of committing any money to it. What we will do is investigate it further and if you will just let me know individually.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Thank you, Chief Gainer, for your report. Thank you, Jan.

And I think I've been derelict because I didn't introduce Sheriff Aaron Kennard who has arrived to join us. So let's do that again, if we can, for your benefit although the name tags are here.

Jeff.

COMMISSIONER THOMA: Jeff Thoma, Public Defender from Hennessey County, Illinois.

COMMISSIONER REINSTEIN: Ron Reinstein, Judge.

COMMISSIONER GAHN: Norm Gahn, Assistant District Attorney.

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: Paul Ferrara, Forensic Science.

COMMISSIONER DAVIS: Joseph Davis.

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: Chris Asplen, executive director of the Commission.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Shirley Abrahamson, chair.

COMMISSIONER CLARKE: George Clarke, Deputy District Attorney, San Diego.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: Jan Bashinski, Chief of Organizing Services, State of California.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: Terry Gainer, Executive Assistant Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, Washington, D.C.

COMMISSIONER KENNARD: Sheriff Aaron Kennard, Carosella (phonetic) County, vice-president of the National Sheriff's Association.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: Barry Scheck, New York City forensic sciences.

COMMISSIONER TURMAN: Kathryn Turman.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: Michael Smith, University of Wisconsin Law School.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Thank you very much. Norm.

COMMISSIONER GAHN: Thank you. I just need to take few minutes to -- Chris asked me to talk about the experience we had in Wisconsin over the past six, seven months.

We recently had our Wisconsin databank up and running, and we had outsourced our convicted offenders samples to a laboratory in Tennessee, and we have currently about 7,000 in the Wisconsin databank. Our last group is in Tennessee now. It should be another 2500 coming back once we get a size, run a size on all the samples.

But with that size for the databank, we have had approximately 12 full hits that came in over a relatively short period of time. I think there were four of them that were from the convicted offender database. We had about 700 case to case hits.

It's been very, very exciting in Wisconsin and we can only imagine what would happen once we get all the convicted offenders into the databank, and also once we get hooked up so that we can have a little overlap with Minnesota and Cook County down in Chicago. I think all those jurisdictions are going to benefit once we all get the computers on the same network.

But just a few things that I've noticed that are as a result of having these cold hits going back so many years, and something which I would hope that the crime scene crew would look at. Questions have come up like, number one, should we do lineups after five years, four years of contact the victim.

Our experience is of course we do, and there is no identification. But there are misidentifications. Then, of course, we have to get a sample from the person who has been misidentified.

What do you tell the victims after five years to come in for a lineup? I have always told my officers I don't want them saying much at all, just get the person to come in. But in a case like this, after five years, I think you have to have some reason. And you may have to go into well, we've got a databank hit. And they don't know. But you should have, as a prosecutor, to just ask the person to come in and do the lineup.

Things are changing here. We have cases, one of the cases on cold hits, we have all the samples for two years in our freezer at the crime lab. When we finally got the hit, the suspect, the defendant is 17 years old when he was 15 at the time. And we are having reserve waiver issues now. A lot of extra work is coming up for prosecutors, things that I never envisioned.

Something else that might be helpful is the first time I granted a search warrant for a cold hit, the amount of work that took and what has to go into a search warrant as far as the AFIS comparison of thumbprints and where everything has been, who did what.

In many jurisdictions we've done that, but I think that might be something you want to include in your work also so people don't have to re-invent the wheel. It was quite a job putting together a search warrant on just how a cold hit is made.

Other questions which I think we need to resolve in your group would be when you have the cold hit, and let's say that there is no ID in the lineup, there would be no confession, which we certainly hope there would be a confession as we have had on a number of cases, and that's all you have.

And I know there is discussion in the community that the cold hit is just an investigative tool.

One of the cases we have, the person was being released the very day. I had the person arrested. Thankfully he confessed, but had he not confessed I was prepared to issue a criminal complaint based upon cold hit.

And I think that is okay to do and I was prepared to do that, but I think that needs discussion in law enforcement. What are you going to do when you don't have a confession, you may have to turn the person loose. But it's something that needs to be discussed.

And I think that is pretty much the experiences we've had here. And it really spawned an awful lot of extra work and issues that you never dreamed would come up. But I'm finding it a very exciting time in my career.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: May I interject? What was the cost of your outsource? And was the total number 7,000?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: Once they are finished, it will be about 10,000. And I believe the contract was let for $27 per sample. I think is what the contract was.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: Are these normal samples?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: RFLP.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: On your cold hits, were those old cases you went and reviewed and sent the evidence?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: What happened was at the Milwaukee Police Department a couple of very astute detectives that we have assiduously went through 1,000 cases of all cases.

And what they did is they prioritized them. They looked at the modus operandi, and even their own institutional knowledge of cases that they knew from a few years back.

They culled those 1,000 cases down to 100 and took all those property inventories and took those 100 cases to the state crime lab. And it's from those 100 that the approximately 12 hits were made.

So I think the police did just a really good job, and hopefully we can go back again through those cases to another level.

COMMISSIONER DAVIS: What was the biological evidence in those cold cases?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: Basically semen.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: Do you have any notion of the age? Because if I understand it correctly, it sounds like an excellent strategy. You're looking at cases that are back a certain number of years that are unsolved, and then you're figuring that those might be good candidates to get hits on people who are already in jail serving time.

So what were the time frames? In other words, how far back were your four cold hits, how many years?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: The oldest was 1993.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: And the case-to-case?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: They started with 1993.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: And case-to-case hits?

COMMISSIONER GAHN: The case-to-case hits are one individual was already charged with sexual assault and was not even convicted with that, he was just charged. But of those 12 complete sent out, three of those they developed a foreign profile from vaginal slides. And that foreign profile matched the foreign profile for the already charged case.

COMMISSIONER THOMA: One thing I noticed, Terry, from your discussion. I know you weren't there in Dallas, but there was a Kansas City formula with regard to working on cold cases after 72 hours, and it seemed to me that that isn't too soon.

In fact, you may get into this type of formula that those cases might be a good idea to get them going, any saliva or any semen that is found in those type of cases. I realize that most police agencies don't have cold cases that are only 27 hours old, but it might be a good idea to think about it.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: I think it's a good point. But even when I was reading the minutes of that, the thing I came to from a police management point of view is why we would transfer a 72 hour case to someone else?

I mean, my first reaction was in the way it was written, the cold case squads were better detectives. And I think one of our educational goals will have to be that the first set of detectives, the first responders need to be as bright about what they ought to do.

But you're right, so if the evidence is there when you get a turnaround time, it shouldn't take another group of people to say, hey, why don't we look at this case from a different prospective.

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: And we definitely anticipate looking into that system. The issue with the 72 hour, quote, unquote, cases, we would hope at this point in time, even before the 72 hours, that there is that identification of potential DNA evidence, and as such what occurs after the 72 hours really isn't DNA specific or DNA generated because it would be worked and identified in the first 72 hours.

But the intent of the recommendations we were talking about are the older cases where they occur at a time when that really wasn't the thought process.

But it brings up another excellent point that I think really encapsulates what we are talking about when we were talking about the minimum standard of law enforcement agencies.

You probably all read about the case in Florida where a fast thinking, well read patrol officer I believe it was, was in the process of following a suspect. Not for the purposes of getting a biological sample from him, but he was a suspect in a number of series of -- I believe they were rapes.

In any event, in the course of following the suspect, the suspect spit on the ground. And the patrol officer was the one who ran over, got a napkin, and gathered up the spit off the ground.

That's the kind of understanding, that's the level of understanding I think that we concluded at that first meeting that every first responder law enforcement officer in the country should have. That should be the level of understanding that every first responder should have, to identify the biological sample like that and collect it.

COMMISSIONER REINSTEIN: The other thing is where I was really impressed by was when Dave Werrett said that in England the most evidence that they got from all the cases were cigarette butts and the saliva from the cigarette butts.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: Just a couple more quick questions I would like to clarify.

Barry mentioned the burglaries that they were doing in England.

Is that still from the prospective that burglaries are a precursor to some more heinous crime?

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: They just have a higher percentage of burglars. Their overall crime rate isn't as bad as ours recently.

But they just investigate burglars. They look for the cigarette butts, they looked for blood in areas of forced entries, hairs, and most importantly they seem to get the most results from saliva. But they really work it and they find those people to go after.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: I guess on the burglary issue I'm thinking back to the Milwaukee experience. It would be interesting if we could walk backwards from the individuals who we identify to the previous criminal history.

So if there is a supposition that the property crime person burglary becomes a rapist, could we take those cold cases, either in your jurisdiction or in Illinois, and take a look at their criminal history sheet and see if they actually have those kind of features. And then, from the detective point of view of someone who is going to do this, go back and look at burglaries in the area for which these people operated to see if we could close burglaries. It would be the reverse.

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: Chief, if I could further this. In Virginia, of all of the cold hits on databanks that we have had on rape and murder cases, 60 percent of those hits, the sample we had was from a burglar conviction of the individual.

COMMISSIONER REINSTEIN: At Promega I think both Dave and the guy from Austria had statistics that showed the crossover on criminal activities between burglary, and I think it was drug cases we had that chart off. That people would later be suspects in second crimes or outside cases. And we got a large number.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: The only one that didn't cross over was assaults.

But what is interesting is that if you take a look at the patterns and statistics that they've given us, patterns in the UK, are what we all know from Criminology 101, there may be crimes committed in sprees.

But all this frankly argues for upgrading the system so that when type one cases come in, because the other statistics that we are not talking about but is really embraced in this data, is the idea that for what they call the dark side of crime as technologists call it, that when you arrest somebody on first arrest there is a high likelihood that the offender has committed one, two, three other crimes of similar nature that were undetected before that first arrest.

The prospect of typing new unsolved crimes gives you the possibility, gives you, I should say, more than we ever had before at the time of that first arrest you're catching the individual before the prior undetected.

So it seems to me you're looking for areas of crime solving that are unprecedented. In terms of technology, that's it. Because you really would be able to capture all these undetecteds on first arrest. We get past unsolved cases in large numbers beyond the traditional boundaries.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: I have a question for the police here in terms of how well does the way in which the U.S. police investigate burglaries mirror what is done in the UK?

My personal experience is that burglaries are not given a high priority at the scene or in any other respect unless you have the evidence collected and preserved at all the scenes, you're not going to be very successful.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: I think you're absolutely right. Virginia is doing something different, but I thought what the mean experience would be that burglaries do have a very low priority, again. And I was kind of thinking through this.

What I can is go right back to Washington and do, and it goes back to training those first responders. But a substantial amount of time and effort would go into it, so you're in a cost/benefit analysis here, about do I keep a crime scene search officer on a nickel/dime burglary as opposed to doing something else, thinking that it's a long term investment by investigating a nickel/dime burglary to prevent something worse from happening.

COMMISSIONER KENNARD: Jan, if I may suggest that having worked burglary for nine years when I was a detective, I come in on Monday morning and I have 50 burglars cases. I will deal with those who are in jail, which constitutes two or three. I come in Tuesday and I get 20 more burglary cases. Burglary has a solvability of probably 10 to 15 percent.

If we could get this to the point to where we had the resources, the ability, and the willingness to convince our crime lab people to get serious at the burglary crime scene, and this is exciting to hear that some of these other agencies are gathering evidence and put some of these people behind bars.

Mr. Scheck suggested that some of these people who have been arrested have committed two or three other crimes. In the west we find some juveniles who have committed upwards of 50 crimes before they were arrested.

So we really need to look at the overall picture, because burglary is not a high priority in law enforcement.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: It's a system-wide issue, too. I dare say that if law enforcement started making a lot of burglary arrests, the sheriffs, the prosecutors would have to take a different approach and the bench would, too. Because again, the priority of who is going to get our attention, it would not be priority crime criminals.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: That was our experience. When we were first involved in AFIS and when I was in the Oakland Police Department, we were starting to get hits on burglaries and we would take those down to the detectives who had already filed the cases. And they were getting angry because they had filed those cases and they had another 25 cases and why were they bringing us these cases.

And I also think if we're going to emphasize something that is going to have a high pay off, we should probably emphasize fingerprints probably even more than DNA. And I don't know that that's being done around the country either at burglary scenes. Not that I don't think we should use DNA at burglaries.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: Well, we throw a lot of powder around at burglar scene to make the victims feel good.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: That is the question we were all discussing.

But let's just mention something from Commissioner Clarke. That is the idea that -- I don't understand, I don't know how these agents work, how could it works.

In other words, does AFIS have the capacity to look at fingerprints that are taken from burglaries and unsolved burglaries, and then when new people are brought into the system and fingerprinted, do they do a search of unsolved crime?

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: Yes. And they hit about 30 percent.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: Is that done on a state-by-state basis?

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: State-by-state.

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: There really is a point that came up yesterday. In terms of the CODIS system, the architecture is ideal. A good, uniform, interconnected system that encompasses every state in the country.

With Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems, given three or four different manufacturers of equipment, two automated fingerprint identification systems between two states can't even talk to each other. There is no national automated fingerprint Identification System except on paper, and the attempts to develop and integrate automated fingerprint identification systems, which it's been a long time in coming.

So one thing we do have with the CODIS system is we avoided the pitfalls of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: But again, in the AFIS system for burglaries in particular, you don't have a transient group of interstate burglars as a rule. So again, it's a cost efficient.

And in some jurisdictions, for example, when we left Illinois, we had developed inter-operability between St. Louis and the databank in Illinois, and we worked very well with the Chicago Police Department which still feeds into the Illinois State Police databank.

But then to expand that we started conversations with Gary, Indiana, and we started our conversation with Milwaukee to see. But sometimes that is happenstance that we all happened to be using the NEC foundation for that.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: When you do a database search, is it like the DNA databank where you say, all right, let's do it maybe on latents taken from the scene, and you're looking. Does it have scene-to-scene hits?

COMMISSIONER GAINER: Yes.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: In other words, we have the same prints. Would you be able to do them, like, run a set where you would have a latent from the scene and it's a partial so it only has four points of identification not six, which I guess is generally required. But you calibrate the system to say, well, run them and if something hits four points but not six, then you can go back and you can do a DNA analysis on that particular case if you had any crime scene evidence. Am I missing something?

COMMISSIONER GAINER: You're talking about solvability and probability.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: But the likelihood that you're going to have the level. The whole point of what I was saying is the likelihood that you were going to have the same process to the level to collect all the potential types of evidence is very low.

It's higher that you would have the process such that latent prints could be collected. It's a high pay off, relatively, about the collection and an analysis.

So that's why I would suggest one.

COMMISSIONER GAHN: I will suggest one thing, Barry, like you said in New York. I will go back and initiate a pilot project in the Metropolitan Police Departments where we do it on a case-by-case basis.

I would be willing to pick out some areas there and train the officers properly, collect the evidence, and see what we come up with on a case-to-case burglary just to produce.

COMMISSIONER SMITH: If nothing else, it would help you get a sense of the possible payoff of doing DNA analysis on burglary evidence. Because the England's experience may or may not fit our experience.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: I think it does if you have the capacity to analyze it on those scenes. But I don't see most agencies having that capacity at this time.

COMMISSIONER KENNARD: Most agencies are not going to come in and start collecting samples and storing them on a burglary. It just isn't done. A detective or a deputy will go to a scene on a burglary, spend an hour, and has done its case.

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: In Virginia, as we expanded our DNA capabilities, we opened the door, sort of, to the law enforcement agencies as to the types of offenses that we would accept.

Of course we started with violent crimes, but now law enforcement agencies all over the Commonwealth of Virginia, they have biological evidence at the scene of a burglary would submit it to the laboratory.

And I think, as Jan stated, it's going to be a while before on a national level forensic science laboratories have the capacity to do that, but I think that should be our goal.

COMMISSIONER GAINER: But in Virginia at their burglary scenes are they giving it a detailed homicide-type view, or are they only picking up the biological if it's pretty obvious?

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: Yes. They will see blood on a broken glass entry. Certainly I don't think the search for biological material is as in-depth as it would be on a murder case or rape.

COMMISSIONER KENNARD: Do they vacuum a specific room to try to find hairs?

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: No. I hope not, because that would cripple me. I think there is a cost/benefit there that you reach a certain point.

But we are finding a lot of burglaries, aside from blood, the burglar goes in the freezer, gets a soda, takes a drink, leaves it out. Well, it's relatively easy to swab that can. And in fact, our first cold hit, I'm using the new STR databank. It was a burglar of all things.

COMMISSIONER CLARKE: I was going to say if you took the cases and compared them to the number of cases, whether sexual assault or homicide where identity is in issue, it's probably a factor of a hundred to one, if not in fact hundreds. So I think the laboratories would be hard pressed to perform work on more than a fraction of those cases.

COMMISSIONER SCHECK: That may well be true, but you have to be strategic.

I'm very impressed with the way that Norm's people went out and strategically sought out cases where they knew they would get the most return in terms of using the DNA.

That is what we are really thinking about. You want a targeted area where you do this. I mean, what Chief Kennard is saying about the numbers of crimes, your status shows juveniles. When they start typing juveniles, they got hits across all the crime categories. That was one of his major findings.

And if you look at the criminology studies of criminals, these are interviews that are done with offenders where they ask him on a confidential basis, what else did do you? Some of them, it's pretty impressive. Still, it's a very, very high rate.

So when you break into that system at some point, you're going to be docking into the crime rate. I think you can do this strategically, with your last. The end is not to overwhelm everything.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Mike, are you going to talk?

COMMISSIONER SMITH: No. I'm just learning so much here.

COMMISSIONER FERRARA: Just one question I guess of the working group on the crime scene investigation. I noted that you had a nurse on the working group.

In the train of law enforcement officers, crime scene investigations specifically for DNA, I think we all recognized and addressed the criticality of that.

However, I can't emphasize how fruitful in Virginia our cosponsoring of training of sexual assault nurse examiners has been in the recovery of quality samples in the most common and most fruitful type of crime in which the DNA is applicable. And that is specifically rape cases.

So I didn't know if your working group was going to delve into that. I assume as much, because you did actually have the same nurse and I strongly recommended it.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: We didn't really discuss it, but I do know there are a number of training programs around the country. We have one in our state as well. It obviously needs to be a part of the report. It needs to be emphasized. I don't think we have to create, I guess, create anything for it.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: I'd just like to make two comments.

One, I gather there will be developed guidelines for the old unsolved cases. But when I asked about guidelines for yet uncommitted crimes, and I was told that there is a crime scene TWG that is going to do guidelines for the crime scene and so we are not going to overlap in that sense with them. So I just want to -- Dr. Rau, you're shaking your head no.

DR. RAU: We are not going to overlap.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: So I just wanted to point that out so maybe you're all aware of it.

The second thing I wanted to point out was that we are trying very hard so that not only the Commission but that these working groups have a wide variety of people who are directly or indirectly involved in the subject, as well as people who might be or should be interested in bringing that perspective. So the point you made about the nurse confirms that.

And again, if you think any other people or interests or concerns or expertise should be added to these working groups, please talk to Chris so that we have them represented and we get the benefit of their expertise.

So those are the two points I wanted to make. Anything else?

COMMISSIONER KENNARD: May I make one comment? May I ask the Chief here, the Superintendent's not here, but in reading your report, he's suggesting that he has a vision of the near future providing raw recruits for DNA training.

I'm also chairman of the post council in the State of Utah. The first thing I'm going to do is take back to our council that this should be included in our training.

Did he have any idea or suggestion from this working group to what level this basic training of this working group included. 8 hours, 16 hours, was there anything in regard to this? Because this is critical.

COMMISSIONER BASHINSKI: We did talk about that and we did talk about it being somewhere between four to eight hours of training. And this is biological evidence in general, it isn't just DNA so to speak. Recognizing, preserving, not contaminating. Those are the main issues.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: I think this was a very truthful and helpful discussion, and thank you Chief and thank you, Ms. Bashinski.

We are running late but we are going to take the break now, come back around 10:30, and then Dr. Sozer will make a presentation. But we left extra time in here so that we are in good shape, Chris says.

(A short break was taken.)

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Before we move on to Dr. Sozer, Professor Berger had an interesting suggestion I'd like to pass on to the entire Commission.

She has been listening, she says that there are a variety of interesting topics that have been raised that would be or might be good topics for research for law students or law graduates, sociologists, criminologists, law enforcement research, and that we ought not to lose them.

Each of the working groups might try and keep such a list and publish that as part of the working group's report so that they would be available to those interested and might even have part of a website such a list as they come up and give bibliographical materials if we have them. So Chris, Lisa. All right.

DIRECTOR ASPLEN: We will do that. We will look into that.

MADAM CHAIRMAN ABRAHAMSON: Good.

Chris, if you would introduce Dr. Sozer, and then we will move to the other side of the table again.

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