Bensalem DNA database helps nab low-level criminals

The Bensalem Police Department, Bucks County's largest, has been collecting DNA from suspects who voluntarily provide it since 2010. The department has amassed some 3,000 individual profiles, Public Safety Director Fred Harran said. So far, it has led to the arrests of more than 100 people, many for lower-level crimes such as burglary.

The database and others like it across the country are designed to catch criminals who often fly under the radar of national and state DNA collections, which contain the genetic material of more hardened felons and sex offenders.

"This is another tool in the arsenal to fight crime," Harran said. "Our program is a voluntary program. And people give up their DNA."

The department is one of at least nine local law enforcement agencies in the United States with such a database. That number is expected to grow, given the Supreme Court's ruling this month that police can collect DNA from people arrested for serious crimes.

The court decision does not explicitly address databases composed of voluntary DNA samples, such as the one in Bensalem. But legal experts believe the ruling approves the use of DNA by police to identify suspects and others in the same way fingerprints have been used for decades.

"By adopting that rationale, it's only going to encourage local police departments to continue to be aggressive with their local databanks," said Stephen Mercer, chief attorney in the forensics division of the Maryland Public Defender's Office, which was involved in the Supreme Court case.

These databases, unlike those on the state and national level, are unregulated, raising concerns about how local departments collect and use DNA.

Mercer said police often ask suspects for a swab without explaining that it will be stored in a database indefinitely or that they have the right to have the material destroyed later because it was given voluntarily.

"How's someone going to ask to have it removed if they don't know it's there to begin with?" Mercer said. "And that's what we're finding with these local databases."

Harran, Bensalem's public safety director, said about 90 percent of people asked have consented to a swab. Each person signs a form that explicitly states the DNA will be used for criminal investigations, he said.

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Bensalem DNA database helps nab low-level criminals