Police want DNA from speeding drivers and litterbugs on database
undefined
Richard Ford, Home Correspondent

Police are seeking powers to take DNA samples from suspects on the streets and for non-imprisonable offences such as speeding and dropping litter.

The demand for a huge expansion of powers to take DNA comes as a government watchdog announced the first public inquiry into the national DNA database.

There is growing concern among MPs and civil liberties groups about the number of children under 10 and young black men on the database — the biggest in the world. But a number of police forces in England and Wales are backing proposals that would add millions more samples to it.

The Association of Chief Police Officers gave a warning, however, that allowing police to take samples for non-recordable offences — crimes for which offenders cannot be imprisoned — might be perceived as indicative of “the increasing criminalisation of the generally law-abiding public”.

Support for an extension of police powers to take samples was disclosed yesterday in responses to a Home Office consultation paper that was published this year. “A number of respondents welcomed the ability to reduce the threshold, including to the extent of allowing for the taking of fingerprints, DNA and footwear impressions for non-recordable offen-ces for the purpose of offender identi-fication and searching databases,” said a Home Office paper summarising responses to the consultation.

It added: “The second issue relates to the taking of fingerprints, photographs and samples on the street. This was welcomed at an operational level as a means of increasing officer confidence in knowing who they are dealing with and enabling them to deal more effectively with the incident at the scene.”

Kath Mashiter, of Lancashire police, and Brian Pincher, of Norfolk police, called for officers to be allowed to take DNA and fingerprints from suspects outside the custody environment.

Inspector Thomas Huntley, of the Ministry of Defence police, supported “the taking of fingerprints, DNA and footwear impressions for non-recordable offences for the purpose of the offender identification and searching the database”.

Mr Huntley added: “While the increase of suspects on the database will lead to an increased cost, this should be considered as preferential to allowing a serious offender to walk from custody following arrest for a non-recordable offence.”

There are almost four million samples on the database, including more than 100 of children aged under 10, even though they have not attained the age of criminal responsibility. A further 883,888 records of children aged between 10 and 17, and 46 records of people aged over 90, are held on the database, which cost more than £300 million.

Baroness Scotland of Asthal, QC, the Attorney-General, admitted when she was a Home Office minister that three quarters of the young black male population would soon be on the DNA database.

The Human Genetics Commission, the Government’s independent DNA watchdog, yesterday announced the first public inquiry into the database. Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, QC, chairwoman of the commission, said: “The police in England and Wales have powers, unrivalled internation- ally, to take a DNA sample from any arrested individual, without their consent. We want to hear the public’s views on whether storing the DNA profiles of victims and suspects who are later not charged or acquitted is justified by the need to fight crime.”

Lady Kennedy added: “The database has a preponderance of young men, with a third of black males currently on it. And anyone on it is there for life. On the other hand, a steadily increasing number of serious crimes, including murders and rapes, are being solved and criminals brought to book with its help. These are issues that need to be considered and we need to know what the public think.”

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said last night: “It is inconceivable that the powers of the police could be extended without a serious and substantive debate in Parliament. They have already encroached on people’s privacy without proper debate on this matter and this can go no further.”

A Home Office spokesman said: “The DNA database has revolutionised the way the police can protect the public through identifying offenders and securing more convictions.

“The consultation is about maximising police efficiency and ensuring that appropriate and effective safeguards are in place. No decisions have yet been made and any detailed proposals will be subject to a further public consultation next year.”

Teen jailed over paid traffic ticket

By MARCUS K. GARNER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 08/01/07

He was basking in the afterglow of a "trip of a lifetime" when he returned to Atlanta Monday.

Seventeen-year-old Stephen Kelsey, a rising senior at Woodward Academy, had just spent two weeks playing soccer in Madrid and London. He was exhausted. He was exhilarated.

What he didn't realize was that he was a wanted man.

Kelsey, a standout soccer player and solid student, had never been in trouble with the law. But U.S. Customs officials, checking his passport upon his arrival at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, found an outstanding arrest warrant.

They turned Stephen over to Atlanta police, who ferried him to the Fulton County Jail.

Kelsey was wanted for failing to appear in court on a traffic ticket — rolling through a stop sign.

One missing detail: The $175 fine had been paid.

"Somebody made a mistake," Kelsey said, "and here I am having to be handcuffed in front of my coaches, my mom, my brother and my teammates."

Marlene Kelsey, who was at the airport to pick up her son, frantically began working for his release.

She got proof that the initial court date had been rescheduled and the ticket paid, and went to the Fulton County Jail, then to Sandy Springs.

"The arresting [Atlanta] officer was adamant that I call Sandy Springs," Marlene Kelsey said. "I went to the precinct, and nobody was there. When I called the 'after hours' number, the phone rang, then cut off."

Sandy Springs Lt. Steve Rose said the department didn't have enough staff to man the desk, and admits that the department was at fault.

"That warrant never should have been in the computer," Rose said. "We should have done something and we didn't."

Rose said his department contacted Fulton County just before Stephen was booked in around 8 p.m., via a Georgia Crime Information Center teletype, to inform the jail that the youth should be released.

At 10:44 p.m., Sandy Springs police received a message from the jail saying he was ready to be picked up. Sandy Springs sent another message to the Fulton Jail at 10:47 p.m.

Meanwhile, Stephen Kelsey struggled to adjust to his new surroundings, sharing a cell with 30 men. He said he was uneasy about sharing close quarters with inmates who appeared to be drug users.

"Most of the guys were cracked out," Stephen said. "I sat next to a guy who talked for 45 minutes to an imaginary friend."

Stephen, resting fitfully on the floor, would occasionally nod off for a few minutes before waking again.

Eventually, Fulton County received word that Stephen Kelsey was not wanted by Sandy Springs. After eight hours in jail, around 4 a.m. Tuesday, he was free to go home.

"For something so minor, who would have believed all this?" Marlene Kelsey said.


www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/northfulton/stories/2007/08/01/jailerror_0802_we...

Court: FBI violated Constitution in raid

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 1 minute ago

WASHINGTON - The FBI violated the Constitution when agents raided U.S. Rep. William Jefferson's office last year and viewed legislative documents in a corruption investigation, a federal appeals court ruled Friday.
ADVERTISEMENT

The court ordered the Justice Department to return any legislative documents it seized from the Louisiana Democrat's office on Capitol Hill. The court did not order the return of all the documents seized in the raid and did not say whether prosecutors could use any of the records against Jefferson in their bribery case.

Jefferson argued that the first-of-its-kind raid trampled congressional independence. The Constitution prohibits the executive branch from using its law enforcement powers to interfere with the lawmaking process. The Justice Department said that declaring the search unconstitutional would essentially prohibit the FBI from ever looking at a lawmaker's documents.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected that claim. The court held that, while the search itself was constitutional, FBI agents crossed the line when they viewed every record in the office without giving Jefferson the chance to argue that some documents involved legislative business.

"The review of the Congressman's paper files when the search was executed exposed legislative material to the Executive" and violated the Constitution, the court wrote. "The Congressman is entitled to the return of documents that the court determines to be privileged."

The raid was part of a 16-month international bribery investigation of Jefferson, who allegedly accepted $100,000 from a telecommunications businessman, $90,000 of which was later recovered in a freezer in the congressman's Washington home.

Jefferson pleaded not guilty in June to charges of soliciting more than $500,000 in bribes while using his office to broker business deals in Africa. The Justice Department said it built that case without using the disputed documents from the raid.

The court did not rule whether, because portions of the search were illegal, prosecutors should be barred from using any of the records in their case against Jefferson. That will be decided by the federal judge in Virginia who is presiding over the criminal case.

"Today's opinion underscores the fact that the Department of Justice is required to follow the law, and that it is bound to abide by the Constitution," defense attorney Robert Trout, said, promising more legal challenges to "overreaching by the government in this case."

The Justice Department did not immediately return messages seeking comment on the decision. Officials have said they took extraordinary steps, including using an FBI "filter team" not involved in the case to review the congressional documents. Government attorneys said the Constitution was not intended to shield lawmakers from prosecution for political corruption.

The court was not convinced. It said the Constitution insists that lawmakers must be free from any intrusion into their congressional duties. Such intrusion, even by a filter team, "may therefore chill the exchange of views with respect to legislative activity," the court held.

The case has cut across political party lines. Former House Speakers Newt Gingrich, a Republican, and Thomas Foley, a Democrat, filed legal documents opposing the raid, along with former House Minority Leader Bob Michel, a Republican.

Conservative groups Judicial Watch and the Washington Legal Foundation were joined by the liberal Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington in supporting the legality of the raid.

Following his indictment, Jefferson's supporters accused the Bush administration of targeting black Democrats to shift attention from the legal troubles of Republican congressmen.

"We are confident that as this case moves forward, and when all of the facts are known, we will prevail again and clear Congressman Jefferson's name," Trout said Friday.

Despite the looming investigation, Jefferson was re-elected to a ninth term in 2006. His win complicated things for Democratic leaders who promised to run the most ethical Congress in history.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stripped Jefferson of his seat on the powerful Ways and Means Committee and placed him instead on the Small Business Committee. He resigned that committee assignment after being indicted.

The case was considered by Chief Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg, Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson and Judge Judith W. Rogers.

Ginsburg and Rogers served in the Justice Department and Henderson served as deputy South Carolina attorney general. None of the judges served in the legislative branch, though Rogers was counsel to a congressional commission formed to review Washington's municipal structure. Ginsburg and Henderson were appointed by Republican presidents, Rogers by a Democrat.

Report: Harsh Methods Used On 9/11 Suspect
Article Details Torture That Mastermind Said He Endured

By Josh White, Julie Tate and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, August 5, 2007; A16



Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, was subjected to the CIA's harshest interrogation methods while he was held in secret prisons around the world for more than three years, part of an interrogation regimen that the International Committee of the Red Cross has called "tantamount to torture," according to a New Yorker article to be published on the magazine's Web site today.

In a 12-page article released yesterday, reporter Jane Mayer analyzes the development of the CIA's secret interrogation techniques and writes that a confidential ICRC report to the U.S. government details Mohammed's assertions that he was tortured by the CIA. Unnamed Washington sources told Mayer that Mohammed said he was held naked in his cell, questioned by female interrogators to humiliate him, attached to a dog leash and made to run into walls, and put in painful positions while chained to the floor. Mohammed also said he was "waterboarded" -- a simulated drowning -- in addition to being held in suffocating heat and painfully cold conditions. Mohammed's captors also told him shortly after his arrest in March 2003: "We're not going to kill you. But we're going to take you to the very brink of your death and back," the article said.

The CIA techniques have come under harsh criticism from human rights groups who argue that they are abusive and torturous, especially when used in combination over long periods of time. President Bush last month signed an executive order that requires the CIA to treat detainees humanely, but a classified list of techniques that are approved for the agency's use has been kept from public view.

The U.S. military services' Judges Advocate General have said in written responses to Congress that techniques such as waterboarding, forced removal of clothing and stress positions would be illegal and against international standards. The JAGs were not consulted before the CIA's development of its new rules.

Asked about the interrogation methods described in the article, CIA spokesman George Little responded, "The program is about more than specific methods of questioning. It's about the use of the CIA's collected knowledge of al-Qaeda and its affiliates to elicit additional information from detainees, and to do so in accord with U.S. law."

Simon Schorno, an ICRC spokesman in Washington, declined to comment yesterday, citing the organization's confidentiality agreements.

Mohammed and 13 other detainees were transferred to the U.S. military detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from the CIA's secret detention program and its "black sites" last year. That transfer was the first time that the Bush administration acknowledged it had custody of the detainees and allowed ICRC representatives to be the first outsiders to interview them in years.

The ICRC report, which was given to CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden and has had limited distribution within the administration's highest ranks, details interviews with the 14 detainees and assesses the CIA program. Sources familiar with the document have told The Washington Post that the report shows amazing similarities in terms of how the detainees were treated even though they were kept isolated from one another.

Sources also have told The Post that the detainees almost universally told the ICRC that they made up stories to get the harsh interrogations to stop, possibly leading U.S. officials astray with bad intelligence. Mohammed confessed to taking part in 31 of the world's most dramatic terrorist attacks when he appeared at a Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing at Guantanamo, and he presented officers at the hearing with a document detailing his alleged torture at the hands of the CIA. That document has been classified.

"The United States of America should not be in the business of 'disappearing' people," said Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) , a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, referring to the use of secret prisons. "The notion is against what we stand for as Americans."

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/04/AR2007080401497_pf.html