Criminals forensically aware claim

Criminals forensically aware claim

Evening Chronicle
Sep 8 2005

Prime time TV police shows are helping criminals get away with crime.

Crooks are using tips picked on shows such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, The Bill and Waking the Dead to evade the law

Burglars are beginning to wear plastic gloves during break-ins and rapists are using condoms to avoid leaving DNA at the scene of an attack.

Police in Manchester say car thieves have started to leave cigarette butts, picked up from bins in the street, in stolen cars, making it much harder for forensic scientists to work out who was in the vehicle.

One police office in the US even described a murder case in which the suspect tried to wash away his DNA using shampoo.

New Scientist magazine reported that some forensic scientists are reluctant to co-operate with the media because it tells criminals of the techniques the police use to catch them. "People are forensically aware," Professor Guy Rutty, from the University of Leicester, told the magazine.

Prof Rutty tested just how easy contamination is by asking a volunteer to walk around a sterile room and repeat a phrase. He was able to retrieve the subject's DNA even though the man had been in the room for only a few seconds. Contamination occurred even if the subject was wearing a facemask of the kind used by crime scene investigators.

The magazine reported that trying to outwit forensic science is scarcely new. In 1988, the world's first case involving DNA almost failed because the murderer persuaded a friend to submit a sample on his behalf. Only when the stand-in bragged about the cover-up, was a DNA match made.

Dr Peter Bull, a forensic sedimentologist at the University of Oxford, doubts that even a forensic scientist could get away with murder, such is the variety and sensitivity of the techniques available to investigators.

A forensically savvy criminal might set them on a false trail initially, but that's the best he can hope for, he told New Scientist. "If you want to commit the perfect murder, there's one thing I'll ask you - 'Do you feel lucky, punk?'"

Source[/color]