Gcbr nice article with dnaprint mentioned.....
Hi-tech labs at the crime scene
For forensic scientists, every second counts. John Macken meets the detectives who take their hi-tech laboratory straight to the scene of the crime
Published: 28 February 2007
There are key pieces of information about forensic police work that CSI, Waking the Dead and Silent Witness won't tell you. There are, for instance, two fundamental problems with the way that labs work. The first is that the number of hours needed to analyse a genetic sample is greater than the number of hours that a suspect can legally be detained. By the time a person's DNA profile has been matched to a sample from a crime scene, the criminal is back on the streets, doing what he or she does best.
The second shortcoming is that, compared with their potential, DNA samples from crime scenes are of extremely limited use. Current tests do not tell police anything about who to look for - appearance, behaviour, ethnicity and so on. Lab work only helps to establish guilt once suspects have already been found. But this is an exciting time for forensics, and things are about to change.
The television shows also fail to convey the industry's conspicuous anonymity. The headquarters of the UK Forensic Science Service (FSS) nestles among similarly pleasant office blocks close to the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. You could drive past every day and be none the wiser about the half- a-million samples it processes every year, or the hundreds of technicians poring over specimens and read-outs. The same goes for the regional centres the service runs - each an anonymous building hidden on an equally anonymous industrial estate. The central issue with the speed of forensics is that criminals rarely elect to carry out their misdemeanours within easy reach of these laboratories. You can be sure that the vast bulk of the samples have travelled some distance to get there.
But, like all technology, the machinery of forensic science - the DNA amplifiers, the sequencers and the computers that run them - are becoming smaller. Usually, this equipment has taken the form of large slabs placed on heavy white benches. But now they are taking to the road.
From the outside, the Forensic Response Vehicle (FRV) is a 7.5-tonne white van, yet it is the world's first mobile facility, capable of in-depth forensic analysis. The so-called "lab in a van" provides instant access to a range of forensic services at the scene of crimes, delivering intelligence on suspects and witnesses far sooner than if evidence was processed at a distant laboratory. The FSS has just finished building six of these vehicles, and Dr Mark Pearse, of the FSS at Wetherby, Yorkshire, recently got his hands on one.
"We had decided to carry out raids on 30 addresses in the Cleveland area suspected of involvement in the crack-cocaine 'industry'," he says. "This would have involved taking multiple drug samples and sending them off remotely for analysis, while the suspects were detained for a routine maximum of 24 hours. In all likelihood, most of them would have made bail before we could charge them." The answer? The first official outing of the FRV. "We parked it in the car park of Middlesbrough Football Club. Police then ferried drug and other samples to us from each nearby scene, and we were able to analyse them right away." This is crime detection in real time. No couriering specimens hundreds of miles to sit in a backlog somewhere. No grinding them through long trails of paperwork. This is bringing the laboratory to the scene of the crime.
The aim is that, instead of the routine two or three days it takes to process a DNA sample and run it through the National DNA Database, profiles will be obtained within eight hours. Via its large British Telecom satellite dish, the FRV will then beam its profile through a secure link to the national database, which will trawl through for a potential match. This is criminal detection in top gear, with strategies free to evolve as profiles are matched or excluded at breakneck speed.
The FRV houses two labs, side by side. Inside is a dazzling array of white surfaces, as well as anti-contamination cabinets, plastic tubes, computer screens, printers and analysis equipment. There is space to gown up and wash. A glass hatch allows the cramped occupants of each lab to wave at one another. It feels like the love-child of a laboratory and a camper van. Each FRV has been designed to be used by up to three FSS scientists. One of the three-strong crew also has the honour of driving the vehicle, presumably taking corners very steadily.
The mobile lab can process anything from shoe prints to electronic data. Two further vans specialise in the latter area. "We also have a couple of vehicles which we've christened iVans," says Dr Pearse. "These are used for computer forensics - scanning phone records, computer drives and SIM cards. We can download the contents of a SIM card in the iVan, then we can dust it for prints, and extract DNA. So we can get phone records, fingerprints and a DNA profile all in a matter of a few hours." But the most powerful weapon in the FRV's armoury is the ability to process DNA samples quickly. Given that 60 per cent of casework now involves DNA evidence, the potential impact of the Forensic Response Vans and iVans could be huge.
There is another reason why forensics has a need for speed. When a serious crime such as a murder has been committed, the first 24 hours are the most crucial for gathering evidence. Biological samples deteriorate, and crime scenes can easily become contaminated. The faster you isolate the scene and stabilise potential evidence, the stronger your evidence is likely to be. So being able to park the lab metres from the sharp end of an investigation can pay dividends.
The FRVs, the first of their kind in the world, are being piloted by four forces - West Midlands, Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire - with results expected soon. The principal sticking point is consistency. Only when the evidence processed by the mobile laboratories has proved as reliable as that analysed in the laboratories of the FSS will the vans have finally passed their test. According to Dr Pearse, this is a matter of months away.
Another development rapidly heading towards fruition is the technology of predictive forensics. Until now, this has largely been the stuff of fiction. In my novel, Dirty Little Lies, the central character develops a forensic method of determining what a suspect looks like from DNA left at the scene. However, this idea has taken a step closer towards reality. DNAPrint Genomics of Florida has developed the technology to ascertain physical traits such as eye colour, hair colour and race from forensic specimens. Just as the FRV is speeding up detection, predictive forensics could be used early in investigations to narrow the field of suspects to those of an identified ethnic background, reducing the leg work and number of samples that have to be analysed.
Two kits are readily available for forensic detection, with more advanced approaches likely to follow. The DNAWitness kit differentiates between genetic material taken from suspects of European, Sub-Saharan African, Native American or East Asian ethnic origin. The company's "European" category can then further be broken down into Northwestern European, Southeastern European, Middle Eastern and South Asian. The second kit, Retinome, predicts eye colour with a claimed 92 per cent hit rate.
Dr Matt Thomas of DNAPrint Genomics, explains how predictive forensics has recently been used by the Metropolitan Police in Operation Minstead, tracking a serial rapist who has invaded the homes of elderly women in various south London neighbourhoods for nearly 15 years. "This individual has been described as a light-skinned black male by some of the victims. To develop further intelligence to prioritise more than 10,000 leads in this case, the Met submitted a sample for DNAWitness analysis. The sample was consistent with an individual who is 82 per cent Sub-Saharan African, 12 per cent Native American and 6 per cent European, highly suggestive of someone whose ancestry is from African groups from the Caribbean islands. This allowed the investigators to focus in on individuals from that area of the world rather than the large Nigerian population present in London."
To further the investigation, DNAPrint and the Metropolitan Police undertook a joint study of various populations in the Caribbean to prioritise island descendants who should be questioned first. "This screen reduced the number of individuals to be interviewed from over 10,000 to less than 1,500. Although the felon is still at large, the police can now focus their inquiry on a very much smaller pool of suspects."
Predictive forensics continues to evolve, and is likely to become a much more precise tool. It also offers opportunities such as suspect exclusion, particularly when witnesses give conflicting descriptions, and in extreme cases of identification, where corpses have decomposed.
It isn't hard to imagine a scenario where detectives at the scene will already be armed with a likely photo-fit of a suspect, provided in just a few hours by a forensic vehicle parked outside. Expect to see a turbo-charged FRV racing through the opening credits of CSI any day.
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