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The city is ramping up its efforts to collect genetic material. But the absence of oversight alarms forensic and legal experts.
New York City is building a vast, unregulated DNA database that police are already using to connect suspects to evidence from crime scenes across the five boroughs.
In the last five years, the number of DNA profiles in New York’s local database has grown dramatically, and by an ever-increasing rate, driven in part by a push to collect DNA in every gun case. As of July, the Office of Chief Medical Examiner was storing about 64,000 genetic profiles, The Trace and WNYC have learned.
Details about the size of the database and its rapid growth have not been previously reported.
The DNA in the database comes largely from crime scenes and suspects at a time when it is increasingly easy to obtain a profile from just a few cells left on a water bottle or doorknob. Lawyers say there are people in it who have never been convicted of a crime, and have no idea that their genetic profiles...