MR. ASPLEN: I would like to introduce our luncheon speaker. Don Dovaston was contacted two and a half weeks ago, three weeks ago, something like that, if that long, by myself because I had a conversation with Clay Strange, as you just heard, and Clay said to me, hey, we just had this little conference here down here in Texas and we had this guy come in from England, and let me tell you something. He was really fantastic. I said, well, can you tell me fantastic he was? He said, well, he's pretty connected to the law enforcement community and who talks about these things and who talks about the potential of DNA. He's the biggest advocate I've ever heard. This guy is really fantastic.

The greatest advantage of the position that we're in right now in the United States with our DNA technology is that we have something to look to in terms of where we can get to and what we can achieve if we make a commitment. That's, quite frankly, the success that they have in the United Kingdom. Even with the differences in systems, the differences in legal issues, and the differences in jurisdictions, the extent to which they utilize the database as a truly investigative tool is something I think that we should aspire to.

Don Dovaston is one of the reasons and is one of the bigger reasons that that system is so successful. He's the kind of guy if you try to read everything that's in the want page that you have, you wind up spending the whole time talking about his credentials, but let me highlight a couple of things.

He retired from the British police service on millennium night having completed 40 years of police service. During the four years prior to retirement he held the position of Deputy Chief Constable in the Derbyshire Constabulary, having been assistant chief constable of crime and operations for seven years prior to that. He was presented with the Queen's police medal in 1990, and on the eve of his retirement honored with the order of the British empire for services to policing. As I mentioned, he was in Texas not terribly long ago. He spent some time in New York in the beginning of the week, and he's coming back here in another week or two, and so weare accessing his knowledge greatly all across the country.

So I especially want to thank him for his willingness to come and join us on such short notice in the midst of everything else that he's doing. So we look forward to everything you have to say.

MR. DOVASTON: Good afternoon, everybody. Truly it is a privilege for me to be here among so many eminent people. The true thanks really lies in Clay identifying the fact that there was some worth in my perhaps attending in Texas and then Chris realizing that maybe I could contribute something here, but really I'm representing what is taking place in the UK. So it's not just on those terms; it's what we do in the UK. You'll know I'm from the across the pond. I learned that expression last night when some of your colleagues very kindly took me under their wing and we went out and had a lovely dinner and an enjoyable evening.

What I would like to do is not identify the UK system as the only model that can be adopted anywhere else in the world. What I would just like to do with you is share the experience, and if any of you find that there is anything within that model that you think can be used to advantage here in the U.S., you're more than welcome to take it on, and if there is any way that I can assist in sort of explaining it or progressing it in any way, I would be more than pleased to do so.

I've got to say quite early on in the day that although we're now enjoying some great success, we have had a rough journey, as you will have. It isn't going to be easy, but all the hard work, all the setbacks, all the long days, all the frustrations, not to mention the sleepless nights have been worth it in UK terms. We are now reaping the benefits of our hard work, and we're enjoying the fruits of our labor.

So having said that, you will no doubt identify and hopefully so in my delivery today you will see degrees of enthusiasm and commitment and at times it has been known some aggression, but whatever way you interpret what I'm saying, please don't believe that I'm naive. I'm not. I have been around too long and 40 years in the UK police service. Like any other police service, you become less than naive every day.

So I'll try and explain it. I'll try and explain the enthusiasm, but what I will be saying is I'm finding some concerns in terms of how DNA and the processes therefrom are being used in your country.

We in the UK, and you will see as I develop, we devote a partnership. We devote the partnership between the demands for a working tool, an investigative tool demanded by the operation of detectives and our scientists. The advocates, the prosecution process in the early days really was not along with us at that time to the degree that they are now. So the drive force came from the police officers, the people wanting to devote ways by which they could identify people who are innocent of a crime very early on, but those who were guilty also.

So what I see is a fundamental difference between what took place in '93 in UK terms and what is taking place here, and unless I've misread it, and if I have, I apologize, but I'm going to say to my colleagues, who are the chief police officers, the senior officers from many, many forcesacross the United States, if I'm going to be objectionable, it's going to be in this one statement. Get off your butts and go for it. It's got to be that you are demanding from the people that have the power to give you the ability to take advantage of DNA. You've got to be the voice in my view.

Having said that, it's delightful to hear that you've got scientists -- I mean there are many of them in your audience, Lisa and many others, and we've got the likes of Chris and all these colleagues who are from the prosecution. We have a crown prosecution process. They're the same sort of people. They're just given a different name.

So it is to develop a true partnership commitment that we found the way forward. We demanded from the scientists our working tools. We wanted them to develop processes that we could work. In the UK there is a history of chief officers of police like myself being hoodwinked by computer companies, for instance: This is really what you want, Chief. This will do everything that you want, Chief, but in the end the final analysis is they're all stuck in cupboards and they're not being used at all except where the operational officers have devised means by which they identify what is required in the computer system.

The same applied in terms of what we wanted to do with DNA. I think that you will see perhaps that there is a value in that. So you've got to be able to harness, and I'll use that term "harness" because it is a ruly animal, this DNA. You've got to be able to harness it correctly, a term that Chris was alluding to yesterday and again this morning. It's no good just going for a quick run, a quick fix. There is no way to develop that within DNA.

The technology is there. We've got to devise the means by which we seek to achieve all of its advantages. So I will endeavor to identify five of those I hope which are the major qualities of DNA as I perceive it and how it's being addressed in the UK. I listened intently yesterday to everything that was said, and I don't think I once heard the word intelligence.

We rely upon DNA not only to give us evidential value stemming from a crime, but our intelligence databases are enhanced immensely by that shortfall in terms of evidential terms. So, yes, we do need the support of DNA to present cases, of course, and have true evidential value, but intelligence is a big thing.

It leads on to the things that are crucial in identifying to your communities, to your people that hold the purse strings, your movers and shakers, as I would call them, its ability to do two things on the back of intelligence and evidence, and that is to early -- and I underline the statement early -- to identify the innocent, and that truly is a value, and I'll allude to that as I go through, and also those people who are truly guilty of offenses, heinous offenses, those that affect whole households not only in terms of murder scenes, rape scenes, but also in the UK you have heard the term the house is the castle of the UK. We protect our homes. We hope to never have them violated, but increasingly our villains are finding ways in which they do that, and that affects a whole household.

So we're using DNA to do that. We call it bull crime. We see that DNA now is paying offtremendously in that area as well. It affects something which is key to us all, I'm sure, a good quality of life, and if we can better that quality of life by our using the DNA technology, I'm sure that we will reduce the levels of crime -- you will reduce the levels of crime in the U.S. and that you will reduce the fear of crime.

We're doing that. I'm five years down the road on you, but I can tell you it has been a hard time. You're just now going through the process whereby you're hitting the hard time. You had some indication as to what the benefits are. It's now encouraging people now to change your legislation, to get funding, and to move on down the road to get your results.

So bear with me in terms of the way I'm going to present this to you. There is a corporate vision of the Forensic Science Service in the UK, and I won't repeat all of my slides, but I think this is a crucial statement to make the world a safer and more just place by realizing the full potential of forensic evidence or science. Within that, of course, comes DNA. This is not only the science of DNA that we will seek to allude to there. We have in the UK -- and Della here I think has held the role and they still do -- I apologize, Della, if I'm not getting it quite right, that you're being the chairman of your association of police officers in the United States.

We have such a body. We have 43 police forces up and down the United Kingdom, the chiefs of which are autonomous. They all have police authorities. They all have people who supply half of their budgets as well as the home office from government sources.

So we signed up to this statement where the aim of that association and with our FSS colleagues, Forensic Science Service colleagues, a strategy to exploit forensic science more effectively to detect crime and convict criminals thereby contributing to crime reduction, deterrence, and prevention. We think they're worthwhile statements, and each chief constable in the UK has signed up to that.

That's the area we cover. Maureen alluded to the size of the United Kingdom and the size of the United States and said she thought that we would fit into the United States area five times over. I think she was being conservative there. I think the UK will fit into the United States somewhere near to eight to ten times, but it's certainly a much larger continent that you are working in.

So what happened? Before I became a chief officer my whole life has been that of an investigative officer. So all the ranks within police forces starting off in Liverpool, if anyone has ever heard of that place or where the Beatles were born is more likely to strike a bell. I dealt we a lot of inner city crime, a lot of horrendous murders, child abuse, and that sort of thing. When I had the opportunity of being a chief officer, I was then in Darbyshire, which is right in the center of England. I refer to it as being God's country, but that's only my perception. It is a very nice place.

I had the ability to be a member of the crime committee, which is a very influential body in the UK whereby we try to determine a way forward for things criminal in terms of how to detect them, how to reduce the crime, and thereby the fear of crime. I detected that we had no real means of taking advantage of this wonderful piece of scientific achievement known as DNA. Ilooked upon the six laboratories which were supporting us in all things scientific. It was run by the Forensic Science Service, and they had at that time six laboratories and they had databases in each, none of which was compatible with the other, none of which I could get access to, and I couldn't compare the things that were held in each of those laboratories with crimes that I was investigating on a national basis then.

So what do you do? You have a lot of frustration. You seek to bend the rules, which is the wrong thing to do, and you get yourself into very heated water. I found myself in very heated water by demanding that we wanted to move forward. So loud did I shout that we got the ability to have a study conducted -- it's identified here -- to review what was the state of the current DNA technology, what would we need to do in terms of IT implications if we were going to take advantage of it in terms of databases, and how it would work, and not least of all, what would be the cost.

To me, and I say this quite often to people and they take offense, cost is not the issue. I think a gentleman who rose to speak yesterday put the finger on the ball. Somebody called him the preacher. That's what it comes down to. The business is not about finance. The business is about quality of life and what we can do to enhance that.

I've got to say I was listening again intently to your Attorney General this morning, a fine lady, and I listened to everything that she was saying. When you have been a detective for 40 years, it's alleged that you no longer have any emotion left within you. Quite often my family tells me that. Anyway I don't show emotion very often, but I sat there, and I must say I felt the heart beating very rapidly. The emotion was coming over me as much as whatever can we do to assist to get to the bottom of what lies in that 180,000 rape kits.

If I'm going to make an objectionable statement, I'll make it now. That's horrendous. I mean for all the reasons that we know and has been explained several times there are 180,000 victims that we're not supporting. I didn't say anything. I thought it was not my place, but I've said it now, so I feel a lot more easy about it. You've got to do something about that position, and you the police chiefs have got to be the people that see it through.

Was the existing DNA technology suitable for the purpose of supporting a national DNA database? I wanted the ability to take samples from people who are arrested in Darbyshire who were committing crime in Scotland, in London, in Wales, anywhere in the United Kingdom -- I wanted the ability that we could take full advantage of a database that could identify them at the crime scene.

The technology was there. I was told that we could with good wind identify to government means by which we could get a national DNA database. It's CODIS by the name. We call it in the UK National DNA Database. How would it work? Very, very simply, and this is how simple it's seen in the UK. It seems to be having a more troubled passage here because it doesn't appear as though every force in your country is supporting CODIS.

We will take the samples of people passing through our process who have been arrested for whatwe call a recordable crime. That's your fingerprint crime. We take a sample of their DNA. We do it very simply. We do it by buccal swabbing. People believe it's the saliva from the mouth. It's not. It's the scales of the skin from the inside of the mouth. It's as simple as brushing your teeth. I do it with my police officers throughout the country who have all been trained to do it. I don't need medical practitioners and the cost of doing that.

So we've identified that it was available to us. We could have the ability to find the DNA at our crime scenes, and then we could look across our DNA database. It was a scientific analytical tool. They went through the process for me. It isn't that every police officer in the U.S. has to know what a scientist knows about DNA. They only have to know sufficient for them to operate for you, the police chiefs, effectively and not cause you any embarrassment.

What would be the cost if we got this mega change to legislation passed through? Well, I can talk about it now. It was commercially sensitive at one time, but it costs the UK chief of police in any area to take what we say is a criminal justice sample, a buccal swab, it costs us about 43 pounds for the whole process. That's 43 pounds sterling. That's from taking the sample, having it analyzed, being placed on the database, and also a second sample which is taken at the time, which is not processed, which is deep frozen and is kept for the life of the person, the donor from whom we've obtained it.

The reason behind that is that it's thought that sometime in the future technology will take over from the STRs. The LCNs I'll talk to you about shortly, and there might even be some new development whereby we can analyze the frozen samples and thereby not go out and have to find all our villains all over again.

I was looking. I had this task. You can see how I was developing. We have a Royal Commission system. It's a dreadful thing when the Royal Commission has to sit to look to miscarriages of justice in the UK. It was because we had allowed -- I include myself in that -- people to be wrongly convicted, and many of these cases were identified by very eminent defense solicitors and barristers who maybe in terrorism cases found that there was some chink in our armor where we had not followed the process. We identified something that perhaps we shouldn't have identified. We shouldn't have had it within our records, and thereby some of the terrorists and criminals in the UK were identified as having a miscarriage of justice, and they were released.

They mounted this Royal Commission to see what would be necessary to make sure that this didn't happen again. We gave evidence to it, and quite rightly they made some very strong recommendations as to police processes in the future. But I took the opportunity to raise what is now in a position paper in the UK. That's where the chief of police identifies a situation that's created across all our jurisdictions, as you would call them, all across our police forces whereby I identified DNA and we weren't able to take advantage of it.

I put this paper in and it went to the Royal Commission, and nothing was heard for some 12 months or thereabouts until they announced their findings, and as ever after all the volumes there is a small section with the recommendations, and there amongst the 134 recommendations were almost word verbatim the requirement for the UK police to take advantage of DNA, a wonderfulturnaround in events for me and for the rest of policing in the UK because the government of the day -- and we have had changes of government so it's not politically sensitive this -- they identified that amongst all the recommendations which would be implemented there would be this element of DNA analysis of suspects and crime scenes.

They passed through a very, very short period of time a piece of legislation which I identify to you there. It's known as the Criminal Justice Administration Act. It was brought into being by signature of the Queen in November of 1994. It allows in simple ways for police officers to take body samples for DNA profiling and to create an operational database and that we could start that process on the 10th of April of the following year, which was 1995.

There is a distinction in terms of intimate and nonintimate samples, and I think it's worthwhile just to explain it to you. An intimate sample in UK terms now under the criminal justice is a sample of blood, semen, or any other tissue, urine or pubic hair, dental impression and a swab taken from any person's body orifice other than the mouth. That's an intimate sample. It can only be taken in very limited circumstances, and those are when the person is in police detention but not charged. It has to be with that person's written consent, it has to be with the authority of one of our senior officers, a superintendent, it must be for a recordable offense, and it must have implications in terms of that person's guilt for the offense in which he's being arrested or his elimination or her elimination.

Nonintimate samples are quite different, and that is where we are finding the greatest success and the ease by which we can now progress on national database. It can be a sample of hair other than the pubic hair, it can be a sample taken from a nail or from under a nail, but this is the one, a swab taken from any part of a person's body including the mouth, but not any other body orifice. It can be saliva, a footprint, or similar impression of any part of the person's body other than part of his hands because we have that allocated for in terms of the legislation for taking fingerprints.

We want to take advantage of the fact that we can go into somebody's mouth very easy and for want of a better expression we can take a sample of their saliva, and we do that by buccal swabbing, as I've said. The taking of nonintimate samples without consent in a police detention not charged with the authority of superintendent must be for a recordable offense, and again it must be to either implicate or eliminate that person.

The heading tells you without consent. We've often thought about it, but I don't know of any case where we've asked to exercise that because even with our criminals that think they know their way around we show them the legislation, and it's a quite simple operation to say we would like to take it with your consent, without causing you any distress, but if not, we have a means by which we can. We've wrestled with how we do that.

Taking of nonintimate samples with consent is the way in which we now progress. So the person is in custody or not. We can do it on the street if necessary, but normally it's when we bring the person into one of our police stations to be charged or be reported for a recordable offense.

The change now is it doesn't have to be in relation to the offense for which they're now beinginvestigated. We can use what we find in saliva or their buccal swabbing for other offenses, and that's where we get the power. Intimate samples not in police detention, I don't know when we've used that. It's really when everything else fails with the nonintimate sample process, and at the moment we're enjoying such success that we don't need to rely upon this. It's there if we want it. If our previous nonintimate samples have failed, we can go for an intimate sample. As I said, I don't know of any occasion when we have had to implement that process yet.

We can go on a speculative search, and that, as I was alluding to before, can be in addition to the one for which the person has been arrested. We can now look across our crime scene stains to see is this person in any way involved in crimes elsewhere? What we're finding is not only do they commit crime in Darbyshire, but they commit crime in London, in Edinborough, and places throughout the UK. The myth that people just operate on their home patch has been destroyed now by this national DNA database. What is happening is not only in the UK, but our villains are now traveling across open borders into Europe, and I'll allude to later on we're encouraging our colleagues in the European commission to adopt processes similar to what we have in terms of crime scene management and the ability to exchange data in relation to DNA material or anything that alludes to crimes being committed by a serial killers or rapists across Europe.

So the buccal mouth swap is the preferred method, but rooted hair should be sufficient. Well, we go for the buccal swab every time. If it is impossible -- and there aren't many cases when it isn't possible -- we'll go for ten shafts of hair with the roots on. The prisoners don't like it; it's quite a painful process, but on occasions they have to go through a bit of pain.

Sample and record retained on the database. What I can't come to grips with in the States is why you're missing the opportunity that lies between arrest and conviction. I do know that there are several states, and particularly in New York whereby hopefully -- I do mean hopefully -- you will have the ability to take the sample at the time of the arrest because when you think about it, the person that's arrested and not sampled -- invariably in the UK they get bail in the early stages. They invariably go on to commit lots more time. We don't need to know of their involvement through DNA processes until they have been bound up in prison and it's too late. They've committed many, many more crimes.

In terms of terrorism, fortunately at the moment we're a position of peace in the UK whereby we're not having any atrocities being committed by people from terrorism, but if we detain them, we can keep the samples and we can keep using it. When a sample is taken during the same investigation and someone is convicted, this is where the illegal dense led screens have been so important to us and so successful.

What happened in terms of the first case in Darbyshire Borough you saw that we had two young girls which were violently sexually abused and murdered, and we had a pitchfork who tried to defeat the system by getting a like of himself to come and give some DNA. Well, we found that if we go into a community whereby they had perhaps some horrendous crime, the murder of children in particular, we will say to them we're not finding our way through this. We may have been investigating it for three and four days. We have no ready-made suspects. We would seek now to have an intelligence led screen in our community.

It isn't that we go and grab every male off the street. We look at it and we go to our profilers and we look to see what can be gained in terms of age limitation, marital status, and whatever, and we build up a profile of what we perceive to be the offender, and we send our officers around and ask the people that fit that profile will they please volunteer their DNA sample.

I know what I keep hearing, that it can never happen in the States. Well, people said that to me in the UK until we started the process, and even the most hardened of criminals who may be in that community will say we want to identify we have had no part in the killing of that child, the rape of that young mother or whatever, and we will give our DNA if you haven't already gotten it, and by that process we're very early on identifying the true person who is responsible.

Now, at this stage I would just like to give you an example of how it works. In a port north of Darbyshire, a beautiful part of the area we had some years ago, not many years ago -- I don't want to identify a particular case -- we had an 84-year-old woman who was blind, partially infirmed, lived in her own flat. At 4 o'clock in the morning her house was broken into by an offender, who rummaged around, stole whatever he could, but then he raped the woman and he battered the woman, and he left her for dead really. Fortunately, she survived, and 8:30, 9 o'clock the following morning she somehow got to the front door and raised the alarm.

The community there was outraged. They were farmers, they were miners, they were hard-working folk, and they were totally outraged. We did our best, and after some five days we had not identified the person responsible, but the community thought they had. They thought they had identified a young man of 22 years of age who lived some five doors away from the victim.

From our intelligence working in the area we heard that that night -- I think it was going to be the sixth night -- he was going to be burned alive in his home by a petro bombing attack with some vigilantes who put themselves together to make sure he got his desserts. We obviously put a stop to that. I authorized that we had an intelligence led screen, and would you believe that we looked at the circumstantial evidence that was identifying this guy as the person who was responsible, and it looked quite credible.

So we went to him first and we took his sample, and we send them in batches to the Forensic Science Service in batches of 27. You only need to know that because that's the way we work and to identify that his sample went down in the first batch. At the time it was taking about seven days to turn around the results, and then we continued the process.

The guy who was the strong suspect who was going to be burned alive was identified as innocent. It was not his semen inside the 84-year-old woman. We told him so, and we told the community. You can imagine what they did for that man. We continued the process, and I think it was the 137th sample we took from a volunteer the Forensic Science Service identified him as the true offender. The match from the semen inside the 84-year-old woman and his was the same. The evidence was so overwhelming that he pleaded guilty, and he is now incarcerated for I think 14 or 18 years.

Can I just show you that that shows the true value of it in a scenario which is very simple. It identifies innocent people and it can identify guilty people, and it can do a lot for community life and the quality of life.

The maintenance of the database, then people will say how long do you keep the profile of the person that has been an arrestee, but not a convicted person? We keep it until he's convicted and there on until he either appeals and is found to be not guilty. So any process by which can identify that person from arrest as being not guilty, not responsible, at that moment we will destroy it. We will destroy the sample and we will destroy the profile on the national database. Otherwise it stays there until that person's death, and we can continually make comparison and perhaps eliminate him or her from any future investigations that ever take place in the United Kingdom.

The better news now comes is that we put all the processes in, we did all the training, we got our offices up to speed, and you can see that it's a very short period that we had to operate in. I was listening yesterday where there was some doubts as how you will train your officers. That CD ROM I think was a piece of excellent communication across the United States where I'm told there is the ability for every enforcement officer to see that CD ROM. If it has got to be enhanced, I would say perhaps enhance it with something very similar that devises several case studies where they can see the process. They don't need to know as much as Lisa Forman knows or perhaps as much as Don Dovaston knows in terms of what makes DNA tick. They don't need to know all that. What they want to know and what they will demand to know is what is my responsibility, what can I be expected to do, how can I give the best of service.

That CD ROM I think will go a long, long way to doing that in a very short period of time. We did it in a very, very short period of time, and if I can tell you now that we can go to crime scenes -- I could go to a crime scene in the UK tomorrow where the first officer to arrive has been a police constable. He will have the ability to say to me -- well, not me now. I used to be a chief officer; I could do anything in terms of going through a crime scene and the like. He has got the ability to say as we say with respect, look, sir, I don't recommend that you should be going into this crime scene. I have my roles and responsibilities clearly set, and it says you don't go in. I honor that. All the police officers in the UK honor that.

I was in some very deep water once when I was addressing a group of senior police officers in Europe in Rome where I alluded to that. There is no need for the senior investigating officer to now go to the crime scene and pour over things and put his best foot forward in terms of destroying evidence and the like, and I said quite facetiously and I'll say it now, but you know I'm only saying it for effect, we don't want to be like the Americans. We don't want to be portrayed in UK films and films that we see where the investigating lieutenant goes to the scene. He is seen to make his way over to the deceased, puts his foot on the chest of the deceased, and has his photograph taken. That ain't the way to do it.

We used to say that perhaps that was what was portrayed in terms of how the United States lieutenants used to do it. I didn't know, but two FBI colleagues were in the audience, and at a coffee break they came over and said, look, Don, we appreciate everything you said, but wethought that was a bit heavy. I said well, I appreciate that, but I did say it was only a joke sort of thing and I left it at that. We became quite good friends until the following morning when distributed around the hotel rooms was a copy of the UK Times, the newspaper that's relied upon as to be a little bit more reliable than others, and on the front page there was a photograph of a crime scene in the United States.

Do you remember when Versace was killed? I hope there is nobody here that was involved in that case, but the on the front page of the following morning's Times was a photograph of the investigating lieutenant. The body had been removed from the steps to the villa, but quite clearly he stood with his right foot in a pool of blood. I found the two FBI guys and said what do you think about that? It ain't the way to do it, and I think you've moved on light years like we have.

So what was the user requirement? Again, the police determine what the user requirement was. It wasn't the scientists, it wasn't the advocates, it wasn't our crown prosecution service; it was us the police officers.

IT issues and storage, we took on the best advices. It wasn't the police officers that had to wrestle with it. I just employed people. Give me the results. I'll pay you for the best results. We got the best results, and we've sat over a computer system which has the capability of going in excess of 5 million profiles nationally. You will need to develop something larger than that in my view if you're going to follow the same road. We did have plenty of liaison. We did speak with our prosecuting solicitors. We spoke with everybody involved in the UK criminal justice system. We told judges what we would be presenting to them in terms of evidence from DNA and we gave them training packages. It's all part of the process of communication, of people understanding where you need to go.

DNA database contributing factors are endless. These are just some of them. The whole business, the whole success of UK system is being derived at the moment from the DNA database, and we use that for intelligence purposes. We then go on to develop the evidential evidence of a DNA sample.

If we start at the scene of crime for which I've got an ongoing responsibility even though retired now to develop means by which we can identify good practice within Europe to protect the crime scene from contamination and damage. I've taken a document. It's known as crime scene management, good practice model for Europe through to the European Commission, and it's the first time we've ever had anything passed for every force in the European Commission to be united in a way forward in terms of this type of work. That has now been passed, so we are now in an area touching upon the size of the United States right across Europe where we're working to the crime scene management model.

The police training aspect then allows for each of those forces, each of those jurisdictions to have a degree of flexibility. How are they going to do it? The CD ROM, if it goes across the United States, as I believe it's going to be, will be an excellent way of doing it. Everybody will work to the same model.

The recruitment was in terms of what the DAFS have to do to deal with the volume of work. The volume of work I hear is being detrimental to the way you're going to proceed. 186,000 thousand rape kits sitting around with nothing happening to them because the laboratories don't have the ability. Well, somebody has got to change that in my view. Somebody has got to find maybe a means maybe by which you can ship them out somewhere. But my plea to you would be to get that done as rapidly as you possibly can. You're going to say to me we know that, Don, but I need to say it.

Lab equipment is being devised by the Forensic Science Service now. We drove them to say we wanted times of turnaround being reduced from a month. We want the turnaround down to seven days. We want you to use robots. We want you to use automation. Lisa will know more than most people here. That's the way to go. They have to go through a process of building. Yes, they have to find places to take all these samples and do the work. It has to be done.

We as senior police officers, chief police officers, have to have field equipment whereby we can examine crime scenes and look for things that we've never looked for before. We were quite good at looking for fingerprints. We were quite good at looking for chew marks. We were quite good at looking for fiber traces and things like that, but not for DNA material.

I'm sure you know, but I use this as an example. We could have three villains, three of your scallywags in UK terms, come in here each armed with a sawn off shotgun and wearing a mask and gloves. They could say, Don Dovaston, you're attacking our very business. We have been sent to deal with you so that we don't get detected as readily as we would do in the UK. Whatever the argument is, they come in here. They hold everybody at bay, and they put a couple of shots into me and out they go. What is the prospect of identifying those people if nobody tackles them and brings them down in here? In UK terms we would be saying we don't have the ability to find the fingerprints unless there are some skills over here that I don't about. Identity is highly unlikely because they were wearing gloves and helmets. If you now bring it into the realms of what can DNA do for that situation, the very same scenario, my view is that every contact leaves a trace. There is no way that they could not leave evidence of themselves. They will leave evidence of themselves.

What we have to have is the ability to find that evidence, whether it be from the skin, whether it be their hair, whether in frustration they take a drink out of a glass or whatever. We've got the ability by using DNA technology to find out who they are. Intelligence will perhaps lead us to where they may be, where we can perhaps recover the helmets and the gloves and maybe the firearm and turn it all into evidence, but first of all we would be using it as intelligence.

Ongoing research, yes, we're using STRs in the UK and we're having all of our successes from that. We pay in each of our 43 pounds in terms of our CJ sampling an element for research, and the Forensic Science Services does that on our behalf. They've moved on to the next generation. They're into LCNs low copy number, of DNA. Lisa will know about those things and several of you will.

We're having to put a stop to the use of that because we have not got the ability to protect ourcrime scenes yet sufficiently to stop contamination because the statement from the scientists in the UK is now the discerning part could be one in a million. It's pretty powerful. We have 67 million inhabitants in the UK. That alone put against the statement it is a person one in a million will have some weight.

The thing that I would quickly say here, though, is that we do not rely upon DNA evidence solely for conviction. We will seek to use it for intelligence. We will seek to go out and find some other evidence as well. I don't know of any cases in the UK now being processed whereby we're relying purely on DNA evidence. We use it, but we use it in conjunction with other things that we've found, other pieces of intelligence, the recovery of property, the identity of the firearm or whatever maybe leading to fingerprint evidence. We don't rely solely on DNA evidence to get a conviction.

So there is a lot of those sorts of things happening. We're saying that, well, until we're up to speed in protecting our crime scenes, unless it is very, very, very difficult, we will not take advantage yet of low copy number. It's there. They can find it just by me breathing over this microphone. It's that powerful.

This in a very simplistic way is how it works, whether it be what we call a CJ buccal swap from our arrestee or from a crime scene mark, the police are the people that go for it. We train our staff either to be a police officer taking the buccal swabbing or what we call SOCO, scene of crime officer. I think you have a similar term, examiner.

They're in the field. So the police box then takes it through to the Forensic Science Service where we have under very clinical conditions the ability for them to handle it for us. They do the extraction, they identify the quality, they do the sequencing until eventually they come up with the simplistic term the bar code, the profile from either the CJ sample or the scene of crime mark, and from there it goes onto the database. On the one hand, the CJ samples of all our arrestees. On the other hand, all our crime scene marks which are outstanding through the United Kingdom.

That's a bit of a scramble, but the thing that I would like to identify to you is that through all this process and all this demand we've not had one penny of government money to assist chief officers to get to this stage we are now in in the United Kingdom. So where I hear deep intakes of breath as to what might be coming in the United States if you don't get central funding, in my view it's got to be from local funding, and if local funding is not forthcoming, you might have to take a couple of cruisers off the road. You might not have to buy an updated helicopter.

I had to do that. I got no government funding and initially I got no local funding. I had to take some of my police cars off the road. I have to wait two years to get a replacement helicopter, but I started the DNA process. It is that important and it will be that impacting. In value for money it outstripped the loss from the two police cars and my outdated helicopter. In value for money and quality of life improvement it was tremendous.

Just to let you know where we are, some figures were quoted yesterday which were a little bit outdated. What did we achieve since the 10th April of '95 by police officers demanding that wemust get on with this. We've achieved this. On our national DNA database we now have as close to a million samples as I can estimate at the moment. It's something like 934,000 and some odd figures. We're going to shout with glee when we get to the first million on the database not lying around waiting to go on CODIS. I mean operationally on the data base 1 million profiles.

What are we achieving from that from our crime scene marks? Well, in the five years -- and this is just in little old United Kingdom -- the week that I had these figures drawn were the week ending the 22nd of July, almost the day that I departed to come over here. We detected that week, that week, five murders, one attempted murder, ten serious robberies, five woundings of the most serious nature, and not to count anything to do with burglary because we've stopped counting. We get so many returns on burglary now that we know how high its achievement rate is, we start to leave them off the statistics list. Over the five years we've identified in excess of 250 murders using this process.

In terms of what that does for our communities in the UK it's tremendous. In terms of the rapes of our children and our women, we're into the thousands now. So from your rape kits can you see what the ability is, what ability you have to make impact upon the quality of life of your people? It has been at a cost, and the cost has been recognized as being unfairly left with the chief constables of the United Kingdom because as of April of this year governments have been convinced that there is truly value in putting money into the enhancement, expansion of DNA process in the UK that they've given us another 34 million pounds of new money.

In UK terms that has never been known before. 34 million pounds in your terms may mean not a lot, but it does in UK. We have had nothing like that given to us before. It is purely for the enhancement and expansion of DNA. What we are going to do now is expand to all our arrestees the sampling of buccal swabbing. Previously what I didn't allude to before was that we have had to limit our activity to three classifications of crime, sexual assault, armed assault, and burglary, and that's what we've achieved it on, all those results I talked about, just on those three categories.

The prospect now is over the next two years that we will increase our 1 million to near on 5 million CJ samples, those of arrestees who have gone on to be convicted, and we will have the ability now to enhance our detection rate because this is a comparison that you will understand. We have 5 million ten prints of people on our national fingerprint database, and from that process we're detecting 10% of crime, 10% across all classifications of crime. Since the introduction of the DNA database five years ago we're now regularly achieving 52% detections.

That is one mega jump, 10% to 52%, and they are involving the most serious of crime. So we're now going to equal the fingerprint collection with the DNA collection, but also we're going to have more activity at the crime scene. We're training our officers to find even more DNA material, so if you can see, it's not so far off where our detection rate across the field is going to be in excess of 50, 60, 70 percent, and what is that going to do in terms of reducing crime, offering the deterrence to people.

Not only that, we have the ability to show our credibility to our inspection process. We have anational inspection process whereby people come into police forces and inspect what we do, that we follow all the protocols, that we don't break the law, that we don't offend civil rights, and through that process two years ago national DNA database came out with 100% success in terms that we had not offended. As a result of that they gave me the power you can now go into in prisons and you can retrospectively sample all the people that are now residents in the UK prison system because many of them, of course, have been in there before the 10th of April 1995 and they were sitting pretty. The government says yes, you demonstrated your credibility. Now go and do it. I did set up a process whereby we did that. All our major penitentiaries, we sent our officers in to buccal swab the inhabitants.

There is a funny side to it. I think I can allow myself to be funny for a moment. We went to one of the biggest and troublesome prisons in the UK and spoke to the governor and he said, yes, I'll bring them down in groups of ten. We'll give you a room. Your officers can be in there. We'll give them additional smoke periods, and that will satisfy everybody. We didn't want to cause any riots in the prisons by our presence there.

On the first morning we're there, ready to go. This is true. The first ten come down in one of the penitentiaries with the wardens, and we see them having their extra cigarettes and all that sort of thing, and just before they're getting called in one at a time we wondered why they were kissing each other. Well, not only were they kissing each other, they were then putting their own saliva into their fellow inmate's mouth, and they thought that would defeat the process. We identified to the governor that this really wasn't done and could we have some other means by which they could be brought down singly.

So they were all sent back and we didn't take the sample. The next batch of ten were brought down, but they were kept apart in very small holding cells. When they were called forward, the officer said yes, we're going to take a buccal swab now. We're going to open your mouth only to find that they Superglued their mouth. Each of these ten had put Superglue on their mouth and we couldn't get into their mouth.

The officers, not to be defeated said, fair enough. We can take it by taking your hair, which they didn't like, but we achieved it by that process, and the following day -- this is true -- the next ten came down. They had their mouths Superglued and they were shaven.

The officers, not to be defeated, found themselves a little pair of tweezers and said we'll take it from your eyebrows. The fourth batch came down and we had no problem.

But now you see the credibility of the system. We identified that we were working within the protocols. We have now got the samples of every person who is in a UK prison. From the 10th of April onwards we sample them anyway and anyone that was in there before we've been in and taken a sample.

In terms of deterrence, we're hearing from the probation service that the one thing that's now deterring people from committing crime on their release is the fact that we've got their DNA. They're fearful of that. They're fearful that they will leave their mark and we will find it veryrapidly.

So in terms of the whole overall picture, just to return to what I said to you early on, yes, we're being successful. You can be equally as successful, if not more successful, because you can perhaps take advantage on what we've done. You can perhaps see roads quicker through the trees than we ever did, and I would invite you -- and Lisa knows because the director of the Forensic Science Service has been over here -- they will share anything. We believe that not one country knows it all, and if we can help each other and certainly law enforcement officers, it's a given, we will assist our colleagues anywhere in the world, and by that process we have a lot of people coming over to see how they work, and I would encourage you all to do it.

So at the moment I would say I'll rest my case other than just saying for goodness sake don't miss the opportunity. I'm speaking to you as a colleague and a friend. I don't want to be objectionable in any way, but the progress in the United States in my view lies within the chief police officers to make, and if you can encourage people to give you the ability like we took in the United Kingdom, you too can enjoy these successes.

MR. ASPLEN: Are there any questions?

MS. MUNDY: Sergeant Mundy with the Seattle Police Department from the International Association of the Women Police.

What I would like to know is during the changeover and beginning to do the DNA process the impact your court systems and your prison systems to the extent that they had to increase your staff in your prosecution part of it or has it been enough of a deterrent that you haven't had to increase in those areas your staff?

MR. DOVASTON: There are several stages of answering that very probing question, and that is in the early stages the prison governors had a fear that they had to live with we would generate more internees, and very early on they suffered from that and they would have to open Army camps and the like to accommodate it.

I've got to say that ain't the police chiefs problem. It's part of the criminal justice problem, but not my problem. If I'm generating more prisoners, if I'm ridding them of committing crime on the streets, it's somebody else's problem to deal with it.

Now, that's a very simple way and aggressive way to deal with it, but we told them what was likely to happen, that we would now develop this process whereby we would be producing more people to come into the criminal justice process, and in fairness to them, they went to great lengths to accommodate that first flood of additional poisoners. Okay. They did have to open Army camps and the like, but they got over that.

What we're finding now is the peak now is falling, and the probation services and social services departments are now telling us that the deterrent value is kicking in and we're not perhaps seeing an ever climb of internees, and also they're finding different ways within the criminal justicesystem to deal with them. They're offering more community based schemes whereby they're not incarcerating people as readily as they were five years ago.

So there are many things impacting upon it, but the governments have seen even now with the expansion program, particularly now we're concentrating a lot more in terms of the volume of crime we're going to be producing again yet more prisoners, and what they're now embarking upon is a process of further prisons being built, state-of-the-art prisons, modern establishments, and they've undertaken that commitment.

MR. ASPLEN: Any other questions?

MR. CAPOZZI: My name is Frederick Capozzi. I'm the chief of police Seneca Falls, New York.

Could you tell us what 42 pounds sterling equates in American money if that's possible?

MR. DOVASTON: It's far more than you're paying. The simple thing is 1.5 dollars to the pound; you're talking about 70 pounds. That's $70 give or take a penny.

Again, you've just reminded me about what can be achieved. I mean I'm not going to champion anybody. I don't need to. You know the guy, Howard Safir, and you've heard Maureen Casey here. They in New York have achieved I think great things. They've encouraged their mayor is it or governor to give them maybe 16 million pounds to have a look at all their outstanding 12,000 rape kits. I think that's got to be by police pressure that that's happened, and I'm understanding he has had something like 110 million pounds awarded him to build a DNA laboratory there in New York. I think that's tremendous, but knowing the guy I can see how it happened in New York.

MR. LATTA: Joe Latta of the International Association for Property and Evidence.

My question is now that we have this technology and you have had it for as long as you have, are you seeing officers going to the crime scene collecting more evidence, and, if so, how is that impacting the long-term storage of the evidence in the local agencies?

MR. DOVASTON: The first answer to that is I don't see that the patrol officer does that. The requirements of the patrol officer are to insure that the crime scene is protected and not contaminated and nobody has access until we have our crime scene examiner, and they're being trained to be very selective.

Years ago they would strip a flap -- I think you may have alluded to that they take the bad and they tape everything else. They're being now very discerning what they take in terms of we don't want to send away things to the Forensic Science Service that will have little intelligence or evidential value. So what we go through is a training process which will allow them to identify that it is only part of that table we want. It is the only the drinking vessel off that table we want. We don't need the contents of the fans anymore.

The packaging now in the UK is such that okay, we've got quite a few of them about, but we canstore them quite readily, and that is a requirement in terms of our legal process anyway, so we're not really giving us a greater burden. It's the training of the people you send to be very discerning, identify where the material lies, and only take that.

MR. ASPLEN: That is quite an incredible vision for the success that's possible, and, as I think Don so well always brings home, the ultimate point is it's all about making our community safer, and wouldn't it be great if we could get to that point where we were actually utilizing the technology to that level.

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