There are many ways law enforcement may match a suspect’s DNA.
Social media users are raising questions about how the FBI was able to identify the shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks who attempted to assassinate Donald Trump on Saturday in Pennsylvania via his DNA. There are a few ways this may have worked.
“Thomas Crooks had not been carrying ID, so investigators used DNA and facial recognition technology to identify him, the FBI said,” wrote the BBC.
BREAKING: According to the New York Times Thomas Matthew Crooks has no criminal record but according to the FBI he had no ID so they identified him using DNA and biometric data. Why and how does the government have access to the DNA and biometric data of someone that isn’t a… pic.twitter.com/36x3IBW71f
— Tom Renz (@RenzTom) July 16, 2024
Nearly all states, including Pennsylvania, have facial recognition capabilities with state issued ID card photographs.
“To further mitigate the risk for fraud, including identity theft, PennDOT issues temporary driver’s licenses and photo identification cards, which are valid for 15 days, to individuals who have never held a Pennsylvania driver’s license or photo ID, i.e. new drivers, new photo ID card holders and new residents. During that 15-day period, PennDOT utilizes state-of-the-art facial recognition technology, FaceEXPLORER, to validate the individual’s photograph does not match another photograph in our database under a different name(s),” the Pennsylvania DMV site said. “FaceEXPLORER is utilized by PennDOT, Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) and Pennsylvania’s Attorney General’s Office. PennDOT utilizes it to mitigate the risk of license fraud/identity theft. PSP and the Attorney General’s Office utilize FaceEXPLORER for criminal investigative purposes.”
This method may explain the use of facial recognition to establish a name and address. Once that information is known, a DNA sample to match against the suspect’s body can be attained in a number of various ways.
USA Today reported that Crooks does not have a criminal record in Pennsylvania, a state, among many others, which takes DNA from certain felony convicts. Since this would not apply, there are other methods.
Perhaps the quickest and easiest way to get a DNA sample to match against is to go to the address of the suspect and attain DNA from a toothbrush, hairbrush or other various household item that contains genetic information.
Another method which may possibly be employed is the controversial infant DNA databank program. The program has been established in all 50 states and throughout the Western world as a whole over the last half century.
Some states have opt-out procedures and ways to get a previously collected DNA sample destroyed. Since the state health department is often over the collection program it is often that agency that deals with these requests.
Promoted under the guise of checking for genetic diseases, infants have blood taken via a heel prick at birth. Some of those ‘blood spots’ are tested for genetic disorders while others are stored in government databases and used for scientific research and more recently, law enforcement investigations.
Another method which could perhaps be employed is utilizing DNA from private genetic history companies, such as was used to catch the Golden State Killer.
There are also programs that enroll students into genetic databases as well.
Perhaps most shockingly is that in order to get a match, the target individual’s DNA need not be in a database so long as a close relative’s DNA is, as familial relations can be ascertained, such as was done in the Golden State Killer’s case.
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