Jensen La Vende

The Na­tion­al Foren­sic DNA Data­bank (NFDD) is said to be gross­ly un­der­utilised ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion con­tained in the last two re­ports.

Dur­ing the sit­ting of the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, the re­ports for 2021 and 2022 were laid by the Gov­ern­ment.

In the 2021 re­port, the deputy cus­to­di­an of the NFDD Shamiso Mc Shine said the bank made its first-ever match based on sam­ples col­lect­ed since the data­base be­came op­er­a­tional in 2017.

That match, which linked the sam­ple to a pre­vi­ous crime, was lat­er hand­ed over to the po­lice, the re­port said, with­out giv­ing de­tails of the crime.

Mc Shine, in both re­ports, said the unit was not be­ing used to its fullest po­ten­tial. He is quot­ed as say­ing in the 2022 re­port that the siloed way the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty op­er­ates ham­pers its ef­fec­tive use.

“Af­ter six years of op­er­a­tion, the Na­tion­al Foren­sic DNA Data­bank (NFDD) of Trinidad and To­ba­go is not as well utilised as it should be. Ef­forts are be­ing made to re­duce the siloed ap­proach and to gain buy-in from sup­port­ing agen­cies,” Mc Shine stat­ed in the re­port.

Up to De­cem­ber 2022, the NFDD had 607 pro­files stored. Dur­ing that cal­en­dar year the Foren­sic Sci­ence Cen­tre did not sub­mit any DNA pro­files, Mc Shine said. Among the 607 sam­ples, 107 were crime scene ma­te­ri­als; 185 sus­pects; 283 vic­tims; 18 fam­i­ly mem­bers, and 14 sam­ples from uniden­ti­fied bod­ies.

The re­port said the ma­jor ac­com­plish­ment then was the col­lec­tion of 9,000 sam­ples from mem­bers of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, 35 De­fence Force, po­lice and Med­ical As­so­ci­a­tion mem­bers com­plet­ed a four-year train­ing pro­gramme in buc­cal swab sam­ple col­lec­tion.

“Foren­sic DNA data­bank con­tin­ues to be a valu­able crime-fight­ing tool for law en­force­ment agen­cies and has the po­ten­tial to link crimes that oc­curred at dif­fer­ing time pe­ri­ods and ge­o­log­i­cal lo­ca­tions, in ad­di­tion to solv­ing cas­es with­out ini­tial sus­pects. How­ev­er, the NFDD is still in its in­fan­cy stage and due to many chal­lenges, re­mains an un­der­utilised re­source,” the 2021 re­port stat­ed.