Governor O'Malley Proposes Expansion of DNA Database for Violent Offenders to Improve Public Safety
January 10, 2008
(Applause.) Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you very, very much today for your kind introduction.
Thank you also for your leadership and thank you for all of the men and women arrayed behind me, some of them in law enforcement uniforms, some of them in the white smocks, which shows that they are critical to our law enforcement in solving crimes. Thank you for the great work that you do.
We know you’re up here -- any of us who have had occasion to support law enforcement or work with them in the courtrooms know how critical your work is to their work and to protecting the safety of all of our citizens. You do tremendous work here. Hopefully, there’ll be a tour, if they didn’t do that already, for members of the media who were kind enough to come out to Pikesville and join us.
We’re joined by -- let me -- some people you’ll be hearing from shortly, immediately following me. You’ll be hearing from our Attorney General, Doug Gansler, who, himself, as a county prosecutor, understands this issue very well. Doug, thank you for being here.
Scott Schellenberger, our State’s Attorney for Baltimore County. Scott, thank you for leading that great office.
Jesse Bane, who is the -- do we still say new about either of us? Not anymore, January’s over -- the Sheriff of Harford County, Jesse Bane.
Jay Fisher from Baltimore County -- is Jay here? He’s on his way, if he’s not here. You heard from Jay Tobin, who is the director here of the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Laboratory. Tom Coppinger, Lieutenant Colonel of Maryland State Police, Tom, thanks for your good work. Pat McGee, Acting Director of Parole and Probation. You’ll be hearing about some success stories at Parole & Probation as we change that department towards one of crime prevention. Chief James Johnson, Baltimore County Police Chief, a little newer than me or Jesse, Baltimore County Police Chief. Meg Ferguson, Criminal Justice Coordinator for Baltimore County. Larry Newsmeg in the back, making sure we’re all minding our Ps and Qs.
Larry Harmel, Executive Director Maryland Chiefs Association. Colonel John Bevilacqua, Baltimore City Police Department, where they had a really strong -- especially the second half of last year -- and we look forward to working a partnership with the City. It’s not just a City problem, it’s a State problem and we’re all in this together, John. Major Bernard Foster, Cecil County Detention Center. Hiding behind the wall over there, Carla Smith, Chief, Family Violence Division, Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office, and Chief Marcus Brown of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police.
Also want to thank Superintendent Terry Sheridan and Secretary Gary Maynard of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections. And also Deputy Director Long, thank you for the work that you and your staff have done over this past year to help us eliminate what had become a really unworkable, large and dysfunctional DNA backlog that we suffered from in our State, where we ranked, I believe, in the last complete year published by the FBI in 2005, I think for all our greatness in being number one or number two or number three in a lot of positive categories, we are number five in violent crime as a State. And there’s really no reason for that, given the talent that we have and the commitment that we have to protecting the life of every single Marylander.
We are a great State, we can be a better State. And that’s what we’re here to talk about today. We’ve taken some important steps in turning around our State’s trajectory and making us a safer place for all of the citizens in every part of our State.
I have a bit of a tome here, I’m going to try to fly through it, because there’s other people to hear from and they can probably do some of the particular examples, so if I leave them out, make sure those that are following after me know that’s because I hope that you’ll talk at greater length about it.
Early on we closed the horrible House of Corrections, wasting a lot of money, very violent place for correctional officers. In the session, the regular session of last year, we ended parole for child sex offenders with the passage of Jessica’s Law. We also invested $2 million additional in technology needed to monitor sex offenders.
Together we have created a system that I like to refer to as Comstat on Demand. That is, the technical help from our Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention -- for any local department who wants to employ Comstat crime fighting techniques, you know, the computer PIN mapping and the things that the City of Baltimore and other cities have used to great effect.
We’re also improving access to important information, allowing State Police to see mental health records before approving gun purchases, something that we learned from the tragedy in Virginia Tech. and a loophole that we closed here.
We also passed tough new anti-gang legislation at the urging of our State’s Attorney’s Association in the last regular session, too. And we also launched a Gang Intelligence Gathering Initiative to track gang members by sharing a wealth of information that comes in and out of our Department of Corrections and also our local jails. It’s one thing to know that the information is coming and going, it’s another thing to collect it, to analyze it and to get it to local law enforcement so they can do something about it and connect the dots.
Together we also started to turn around what had become almost the elimination of any sort of facilities for juvenile justice. We built the first new and modern juvenile justice facility in our State in many years by reopening the Victor Cullen Center, we boosted drug treatment by $5 million, and we actually started partnering with our partners in the District of Columbia to fight cross-border gun trafficking -- something that’s also a success story -- by getting immediate arrest data to partners in Parole & Probation on both sides of the District of Columbia and Maryland border, so that they can take people off the street, repeat violent offenders who try to purchase guns to shoot people again and we can put them behind bars right away, before they murder or harm another family.
Today we’re talking about the progress we’ve made on the DNA database. A year ago, just a year ago, we had a backlog of 24,300 DNA samples that were required by law to have been taken, that simply had not been taken.
Why? Because we had not invested in it. Because on the starvation diet of making public safety agencies run as lean as they possibly can, we weren’t able to knock out that DNA database. So State and local police officers did not have the array, if you will, the library of modern DNA fingerprints, against which to match the evidence they collect so they can solve more crimes and take predators off the street before they harm again.
Together we have knocked off that backlog. And how did we do it? By filling some long vacant positions. I’m tempted to ask how many of you started within the last year, but I won’t do that, I’ll get the answer before I ask. Something I learned in court.
But we did fill a number of long vacant positions. We increased funding and support for lab equipment and personnel that amounted to about $800,000. We approved overtime, we created DNA Stat to track our progress in collecting and analyzing this information and putting it through the various steps.
And most importantly we brought together the agencies responsible for public safety in order to advance the cause of public safety -- that is, to lock up these repeat predators before they can harm again.
And I want to thank all of the agencies that took part in this. As a result, we have increased Maryland’s contribution to the Federal CODUS database by 88 percent in one year’s period of time. Making Maryland the national partner that we need to be so that we can solve these crimes.
Now, what does that mean in real terms for human lives in our State? Last year alone, last calendar year, we had 287 DNA hits, that’s an increase of 51 percent. And that growing DNA database and the shrinking backlog has supported a number of success stories. In Baltimore County, from May of last year to December 10th, 24 rape cases were cleared because of DNA, leading to the arrest or charging of 15 suspects, several of them had committed multiple crimes. Now, the most notorious of which was Alfonso Hill, charged in seven County cases and one City case that Chief Johnson may tell you more about shortly.
In the last half of 2006, that is the calendar year before, there were only four suspects that were arrested as a result of DNA. So four suspects versus 15 suspects. And if, God forbid, you or your wife or your daughter had been one of those victims who was spared becoming the victim again of a repeat predator it was worth every penny and all of the effort that these men and women put into their important job.
In Montgomery County DNA profile of a convicted offender matched the profile that had been entered from a crime scene of a woman’s rape in 1995. In 1989 police -- the City Police Department -- investigated the case of a woman who was tragically murdered in 1989. Years later a DNA profile from trace evidence was placed in the CODUS. In June of 2007 we received a hit on a known convicted offender and now he’s awaiting trial for that crime in the Circuit Court for Baltimore City.
Every single offender that we apprehend could be the one that would have committed the next violent crime or, more likely, a series of violent crimes, if we had not put them behind bars.
Today Maryland is not only a stronger and safer place, by working together, we also have been able to reach a level of operational efficiency that combined with technology and laws already in place allows law enforcement to solve more of these sorts of crimes. So we put rapists, murderers and those that would harm other human beings behind bars.
Now, there has been a natural evolution of this sort of science. Initially, it started just with the handful of limited crimes to sexual offenses, then it grew to those convicted for violent crimes. And what we are announcing today is that in our next legislative session we are going to catch up with the vanguard of other States in our country who are leading the way by making sure that we take DNA samples from all of those who are arrested for violent crimes in our State, including those arrested for burglaries. It will be a huge help to increasing the reservoir of information that law enforcement will have to solve these cases and to make Maryland one of the safest states in the union.
Our partner on the other side of the Potomac, Virginia, has been way ahead of us on this issue for a long time. They have been collecting samples from those arrested for violent crimes since 1998. Since that time, a State relatively equal to ours in size, they’ve collected 267 DNA samples, resulting in some 4,400 hits.
Maryland hits, to date, are 847 hits. We can do better. We can solve more crimes, we can make our State a safer and better place. In Virginia, if they had had the sort of restrictive definition of those from whom DNA samples can be taken as we do currently in Maryland, 80 percent of those cases that they solved would not have been solved.
So this is real law enforcement. These are the lives of our fellow citizens and approximately 40 percent of violent crimes solved in Virginia were perpetrated by individuals that had prior property crime convictions as well. So fo those who say, well, burglary is not important, it is important. Rarely do people actually specialize in one particular type of crime.
I’ve been talking too long. Let me wrap up and turn it over to the Attorney General.
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We are -- again, to recap, we are going to be asking the State Legislature to join us in partnership with local law enforcement and prosecutors throughout the State in order to have Maryland join the vanguard of states, the leading edge of states, who are protecting lives and reducing crime by expanded use of DNA evidence. We oftentimes see it in the headlines in the newspapers, not only does it exonerate those who might not have been guilty, but it also allows us to put rapists, murderers and other repeat violent offenders behind bars before they can commit crimes again.
Let me now introduce to you Attorney General Doug Gansler. Doug. (Applause)
MR. GANSLER: Thank you. Thank you all for being here.
And I want to thank in particular the Governor and applaud his efforts for trying to bridge the gap -- having the recognition and the leadership in trying to bridge the gap between the very disproportionate fact that Maryland is the wealthiest State in the country, the State with the most -- the most highly educated State in the country, yet the fifth most violent State in the country. That’s a disconnect that ought not to exist and Governor O’Malley is making it part of his priority to try and bridge that gap and I applaud him for that.
The Governor also just mentioned when we’re talking about DNA, we’re talking about the most advanced technology in terms of criminal evidence that we have. It is dispositive. And, therefore, it is dispositive in terms of not only inculpating a particular suspect or criminal, but it exculpates as well.
You know we often talk about somebody who’s been wrongfully convicted or someone who has been released after sometime in jail -- well, it’s DNA that makes that happen. But it’s also juries in the wake of the OJ Simpson trial and every prosecutor in the room understands this, juries now want to see DNA evidence.
So the fact that we are now upping the amount of DNA evidence that we’re taking is an incredibly positive step in trying to bridge the gap in terms of criminal law here.
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