News

London mayor Ken Livingstone is to be asked to support calls for the Metropolitan police to stop taking and retaining DNA samples for public order offences

The call for the police to stop taking DNA samples comes from the diverse London borough of Brent.

Liberal Democrat councillor James Allie won the support of the entire council for his motion to lobby the borough’s police commander to stop retaining DNA for minor offences.

Borough commanders have discretion to not take samples.

He told The Voice that the motion was prompted by his own experience with the police.

He said: “I was arrested on boxing day 2005. The police said I committed a section 5 public order offence, which is basically to say I caused alarm or distress or showed threatening behaviour. They wanted to give me an £80 penalty charge, but I said I’m innocent so I’m appealing against it.

“I checked the figures and it turns out that in Brent, over a third of black men had been stopped by police and had samples taken and put on the police national database.

“From my experience this database is being built by stealth.”

The police have powers to take DNA samples from persons they arrest and can retain the samples on the police national database, even if the person is not charged with or convicted of the crime.

The police powers extend to taking and retaining DNA from children and youths.

POWERS

Allie explained that the wide powers meant that many people could find themselves on the database, even though they were not convicted of any crime.

“What are the consequences of taking samples when a person is innocent and never been prosecuted,” asked Allie.

“The effect is that these young men have police records, which they will have to explain to potential employers. It affects them disproportionately. There are also issues with securing visas - you are asked if you have ever had problems with the police.

“There are also questions from a privacy point of view, whether your details should be on a police database at all. What are the police doing with these figures, what are they using these figures for?”

He added: “This is not about attacking the police or undermining their authority. We want to call for colour blind policing and an end to racial profiling.”

“There is no justification for taking DNA samples for section 5 offences. We as a responsible elected body in Brent will not tolerate this being done to our young black men.”

Brent Council is thought to be the first in the UK to formally ask their Borough commander to end the practice of taking DNA swabs from people on arrest, without any guilt being proven or admission made.

There are over a million people on the database who have never been charged with a crime, or who were subsequently acquitted of one. Afro-Caribbeans are 10 times over-represented on the database. Nearly 25,000 minors have had their DNA taken, some as young as 11 years old.

Published: 09 February 2007
Issue: 1255