Whatcom County has been awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars from the federal government for equipment that will help law enforcement officers identify criminal suspects.
The $440,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Justice will enable the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office to purchase a Rapid DNA machine to allow deputies and other local law enforcement to identify suspects and build a DNA database.
Currently, WSCO doesn’t have a forensic unit and relies on other law enforcement in the region, including Homeland Security and the Washington State Patrol, for assistance in cases that rely on retrieving phone data and DNA results.
Deb Slater, the public information officer for WSCO, said it can take weeks, if not months, for the WSP lab to get results back to local law enforcement.
“The property crimes in the region, like so many others in the United States, has risen exponentially and to which no agencies in this county presently dedicate a single investigator,” according to the grant application. “The Rapid DNA would be critical in both identifying and eliminating suspects; generating timely investigative leads; and helping to build cases against criminals who flock to our region for the sole purpose of stealing property and violating citizens.”
The machine will allow investigators to test DNA from suspects, human remains, blood and other biohazard materials, and identify a potential match within 90 minutes, according to Slater.
The funds were released on in August to Whatcom County with final approval from county finance and county council still pending. WCSO has until June 2025 to purchase the machine.
The funding request went through U.S. Rep. Rick Larsen’s office and was part of a package of spending for local infrastructure, community services, education and workforce development, and road and bridges.
The Bellingham Police Department also applied for a $440,000 grant from the DOJ in February, specifically for the purpose of purchasing a rapid DNA machine, according to the Bellingham Herald. It’s unclear if it was the same grant or not.
Rapid DNA machines have been criticized since the technology came on the market around 2017 after Congressional approval. The machines’s accuracy has been called into question, with the wide variety of crime scene collection scenarios, along with concerns about privacy in the collection of DNA.
Usage standards for rapid DNA machines on a local level is a case by case basis, says Saira Hussain, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to defending civil liberties.
The FBI has strict guidelines about how it collects DNA and indexes it into a database, Hussain said. But because of rapid DNA results collected by local law enforcement agencies, it cannot go into the FBI DNA database because the collection standards aren’t the same.
“So oftentimes, local agencies then create their own local DNA bases, which are often known as rogue databases,” she said.
Hussain added that in some cases, law enforcement agencies expand the scope of DNA collection, or in one case in California, built a DNA collection off of samples given in exchange for dropping low level infraction tickets.
“It was a system known as ‘spit and acquit,'” she said. “Over the course of the entire program, only three potential cases out of the hundreds of thousands of samples they collected could be attributed to solving three crimes.”
It’s unknown what kind of policy WCSO will implement with the rapid DNA test machines. Slater said the office will create its own policy by working with other law enforcement agencies who use rapid DNA test machines and asking what the standards for collections are. After the procurement process is complete, WCSO will train all deputies on how to use the machine.
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
