Cops lie to woman to get her DNA, arrest her son for murder

[Gil Bang 26007]

 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/they-lied-us-mom-says-police-deceived-her-get-her-n1140696?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_ma

VALDOSTA, Ga. — On an October morning in 2018, Eleanor Holmes and her husband left home to run an errand and found two men inside their front gate. They introduced themselves as detectives from Orlando, Florida, and said they needed the couple’s help.

Standing in the driveway, the casually dressed detectives said they were trying to identify someone who’d been found dead many years earlier, the Holmeses recalled. They were looking for the person’s relatives, and were using DNA and genealogical records to stitch together a family tree that they hoped would lead them to a name. Friendly and businesslike, they said they’d already got DNA samples from Eleanor Holmes’ sister and an aunt. And now they wanted hers.

 

Holmes already knew about the detectives’ visit to her sister. It worried her that someone in her family had died without anyone knowing about it. She had relatives in Orlando, including a niece whom she hadn’t heard from in more than a decade. So she agreed.

“I just did it because that was the only thing on my mind, my niece. That was it, bottom line,” Holmes said in a recent interview.

The detectives, still standing in the driveway, swabbed Holmes’ cheek and put the sample in a container. They thanked her, gave her a business card and drove away.

She thought nothing of it until a few days later, when she got a frantic phone call from the girlfriend of one of her sons, Benjamin Holmes Jr. Orlando police had just arrested him for allegedly fatally shooting a college student, Christine Franke, in her Florida home in 2001. They’d used DNA and genealogical records to tie him to the crime.

 

In that panicked moment, it dawned on Holmes that the detectives hadn’t told her the truth. They’d used her DNA to help build a case against her son.

“When they arrested him, I knew they were lying,” Holmes said. “They lied to us.”

Police have said that the arrest of Benjamin Holmes Jr., 39, shows their commitment “to do everything we can to solve crimes.” Franke’s family says the arrest has given them long-needed answers about her death and allowed them to stop wondering if the killer was still out there, free to prey on others.

Benjamin Holmes Jr. and his parents, though, say he is innocent. He has pleaded not guilty, and his trial, scheduled for June, may be the first to explore how police conduct investigations using genetic genealogy, a largely unregulated technology that has exploded in popularity in recent years.

Holmes and her husband, who are both in their mid-70s, aren’t the only ones in their family who feel misled by police. In the months before taking her DNA, Orlando detectives visited more than a dozen of her relatives in Florida and Georgia. Several said they were told a similar story before agreeing to provide DNA samples.

“It was just deception, not only to me but all my other family members, because they know what they were looking for when they took the DNA,” Holmes said. “They weren't looking for someone in our family that had been killed, or that was dead. They were looking totally to find out whether or not our DNA coincided with Benjamin's. That's what they were looking for.”

A new tool for a cold case

For 17 years, Orlando police detectives had tried to figure out who killed Franke. Although the case had gone cold, each did what they could with the available technology and manpower. But every lead, every potential clue found at the scene, left them, and Franke’s family, without answers.

“I thought they’d never catch him,” Franke’s mother, Tina, 70, said.

 

Tina Franke, right, the mother of murder victim Christine Franke, gets a hug from Christine's niece, Ashley, after a press conference on Nov. 5, 2018, at Orlando Police Department headquarters announcing the solving of the cold case from 2001.Joe Burbank / Orlando Sentinel via AP file

Franke, 25, was one of four siblings raised in Vero Beach, 100 miles outside Orlando. An aspiring elementary school teacher, she was studying at the University of Central Florida while working as a server at a restaurant near the Universal Orlando theme parks. She lived with her girlfriend about a half hour away, on the north side of town.

Early in the morning of Oct. 21, 2001, after working a double shift, Franke returned home to an empty apartment; her girlfriend was out of town. Later that day, after the girlfriend was unable to reach her, she called a neighbor, who found Franke dead just inside the apartment door.

She’d been shot once in the head, and her wallet, containing no cash, had been discarded on the floor, according to court documents. Her clothing had been partially removed, and investigators found semen on her body. Police surmised that she had resisted the killer’s attempts to rob and rape her.

Police took a sample of the semen and submitted it to the state crime lab, which developed a profile and entered it into a national criminal database. There was no match. They took DNA from dozens of people ─ potential suspects, as well as friends, relatives, co-workers, neighbors, acquaintances and witnesses ─ and compared their profiles to the DNA found at the scene. Again, no hits.

 

An evidence marker at the scene of Christine Franke's shooting death.Orlando Police Department

They tried other forensic methods ─ lifting fingerprints from the apartment, entering a shell casing into a national firearms database ─ and found nothing. Years passed with no progress.

That changed in April 2018, when California authorities announced that they’d used a groundbreaking technique to identify a man they said was the Golden State Killer, a serial rapist and murderer who’d terrorized the state in the 1970s and the 1980s. Law enforcement officials said they’d solved the case by entering crime-scene DNA into an online database called GEDmatch, where people shared profiles purchased from direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe.

 

 

 

 

Should police be able to use DNA databases to solve crimes?

OCT. 24, 201902:45

 

 

Orlando Detective Michael Fields, who inherited the Franke case from a retired colleague in 2012, decided to try the same tactic. He reached out to a Virginia company, Parabon NanoLabs, which had just started helping law enforcement identify unknown suspects by using genealogy websites to find their relatives and build family trees. The researchers, led by Parabon’s top genealogist, CeCe Moore, found two cousins of the suspected killer in GEDmatch and traced their common ancestors to a husband and wife who lived in Valdosta in the first half of the 1900s.

The Valdosta couple had an extremely large family, producing a sprawling family tree. Navigating that thicket left Fields and the researchers at dead ends, unable to go further without getting DNA from more people in the family.

Testing the limits of DNA collection

Asking innocent people to voluntarily provide their DNA — known as “target testing” — is an unseen but essential, and thorny, component of investigative genetic genealogy. While police are seeking straightforward information about family ties, the process can also reveal secrets, including out-of-wedlock births and adoptions, ethics and privacy experts say. Subjects may not fully understand how their DNA profiles will be used.

While American courts have ruled that police are allowed to mislead people to obtain evidence, there’s a debate within law enforcement over how honest police should be in seeking DNA from people who aren’t suspected of a crime.

Investigator Matt Denlinger works cold cases for the Cedar Rapids Police Department in Iowa. He used target testing to help solve the 1979 murder of a teenage girl. He says the truth, without including many details, usually works.

“You just go up and tell them what you’re doing. No sleight of hand,” he said. “Most people are happy to help. They know they’re not involved. People get excited to help solve a mystery, if you phrase it that way.”

Related

 

NEWS

New DNA methods could solve a 1980 cold case. But NY won't let investigators use it.

Jennifer Spears, a cold case investigator with the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, said she rarely gets any hesitation from the people she approaches. “I tell them their DNA is only being used in this case to help us determine where we need to be on the family tree,” she said. “Are we on the right branch, or are we way off?”

The Department of Justice requires “informed consent” from nonsuspects before collecting DNA for a genetic genealogy investigation, according to an interim policy published last year. If a law enforcement agency decides that getting such consent would “compromise the integrity of the investigation,” then investigators may obtain the sample covertly, but must first get approval from a judge.

The policy covers cases involving federal authorities, so it does not apply to the Franke case, which was handled by local police. It also leaves unaddressed the use of a false story to persuade someone to provide a DNA sample. The lack of uniform rules opens the process to ethical risks, said Christi Guerrini, an assistant professor in the Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the Baylor College of Medicine.

“Unless circumstances compel us otherwise, we generally want people to be informed as to why they’re being asked to provide DNA to help with the investigation,” she said, adding that she didn’t know enough about Orlando police’s actions to evaluate their handling of the Franke case.

The Orlando Police Department and the State Attorney’s Office prosecuting the Franke case declined to comment.

Fields also declined to talk about his work on the case, but in interviews last year, he shared his general approach to asking people for their DNA. He said he has done it about 40 times, either as the lead investigator on a case, or assisting other police departments.

Fields said his approach depended on the person: how closely related they appeared to be to the unidentified suspect, whether they’d worked in law enforcement, whether they’d done any research on their own family trees.

He said he typically told his subjects the truth, without getting too specific: that there was a murderer or rapist in their family and he needed their DNA to figure out who it was. Other times, Fields said, he used a “ruse.” He declined to say what it was, or why he used it. “But it’s effective,” he said.

Visits from the police

Holmes was raised in Valdosta, a small city near the Georgia-Florida border, but met her husband at a restaurant in Orlando, more than 200 miles away. They married and raised six children there, including Benjamin Holmes Jr., who they said was athletic, outgoing, popular and a junior deacon at his church. He didn’t give his parents too much trouble beyond staying out late, they said.

After their children were grown, Holmes, a former nurse’s aide, moved back to Valdosta with her husband, a retired chef. They live a quiet life there in a single-story home behind a screen of pine trees and a chain-link gate. The couple are intensely private. The visit from the detectives in October 2018 upended that.

Fields and his partner, Detective Michael Moreschi, arrived without any advance notice. It quickly became clear that they already knew a lot about the Holmes family.

“They knew my father, they knew my children, they could name every one of my children, where they lived. Everything that they wanted, they had it right there,” Holmes recalled. “Except for my DNA.”

 

Detectives used a chart to predict how closely the suspect was related to others who'd provided their DNA.Orlando Police Department

At that point, Fields and his colleagues had collected more than a dozen voluntary DNA samples that had narrowed the search. They believed the killer was one of Holmes’ two sons, according to an affidavit Fields would later file in court.

Among those who’d already given their DNA was Alvin Davis, who said the detectives showed up at his Valdosta home and told him they were trying to identify a woman who’d died in Orlando. They thought she was related to him, and needed his DNA to help figure out who she was.

Davis said he wasn’t worried; he liked the police and wanted to help. ”I got nothing to hide,” Davis, 63, recalled telling them. They swabbed his cheek and left.

The detectives told Cynthia Young, who lives in Miami, a similar story when they came to her door for her DNA.

Young, 63, a retired corrections officer, said she agreed because she understood how DNA could help a police investigation.

“I didn’t have a problem with it,” she said. “I see the good of using DNA.”

Those DNA submissions helped pave a genetic trail that led police to Holmes.

A son is arrested

Holmes said she isn’t a very trusting person. But the detectives put her at ease. Before submitting to the swab, she said she joked with the detectives that they might find out that she was related to them.

“I didn't really think it over,” she recalled.

The detectives then asked her husband for his DNA. He declined and walked away.

“For me to give my DNA to you, you have to come with some kind of papers from lawyers or something,” Benjamin Holmes Sr. recalled. “Just going to walk in out of the blue and say, ‘I want to take your DNA, could you give me a sample?’ No.”

Immediately after collecting Holmes’ DNA, police sent it to the Florida state crime lab, which determined that the suspect was one of her two sons, Reginal Holmes and Benjamin Holmes Jr., who both lived in Orlando, according to the Fields affidavit.

Investigators first focused on Reginal Holmes, following him to work as he installed air conditioning units at a construction site. An undercover officer approached him, got into a conversation with him, and offered him a bottle of Gatorade. Reginal Holmes took it and drove away, with the undercover officers tailing him, according to Fields’ affidavit. When Reginal Holmes threw the bottle into a dumpster, a detective retrieved it and took it to the state crime lab, which obtained a DNA profile and compared it to the crime scene DNA. There was no match, making Benjamin Holmes Jr. the prime suspect.

 

The Orlando Police Department arrested Benjamin Holmes Jr. in connection with the death of Christine Franke.Orlando Police Department

He was a Wendy’s restaurant manager with a record of arrests dating to 2001, mostly low-level drug charges and probation violations, as well as a domestic violence charge, according to Fields’ affidavit. Officers put him under surveillance. On the second day of following him, officers watched him step outside a friend’s house with a cigar and a beer, then throw them out. An undercover detective retrieved both, and police sent them to the crime lab, which found a match with the DNA from the crime scene.

Based on that link, and a follow-up sample of DNA Benjamin Holmes Jr. provided under court order, police arrested him on Nov. 2, 2018, charging him with shooting and robbing Franke. They did not offer a motive or a connection between the two.

Benjamin Holmes Jr. denied killing Franke, or ever knowing or meeting her. “He has no idea how his DNA ended up at that place,” his lawyer, Jerry Girley, said.

Girley said he was exploring ways to prevent the DNA evidence from being used at trial. He noted that the Franke case was among several in which DNA samples at state crime labs were found to have been contaminated. Lab officials have said that the samples have since been reanalyzed under sanitary conditions, providing profiles that can be used in court.

 

On the floor of Franke's apartment, between the dining room and the vestibule, investigators found her discarded wallet, phone and opened backpack.Orlando Police Department

Girley has also discussed the case with the American Civil Liberties Union, which is tracking it as part of a broader plan to challenge the warrantless collection of DNA from property abandoned by potential suspects.

Girley acknowledged that police didn’t break any laws when they used a ruse to obtain DNA from Holmes. But, he said, the tactic ought to be restricted.

“There should be further evolution of the law to come abreast with the evolution of technology,” Girley said.

‘They tricked me’

After hearing about Benjamin Holmes Jr.’s arrest, the relatives who gave their DNA to supposedly help identify a dead person realized the truth.

Young figured it out after seeing news coverage, which focused on the use of genetic genealogy.

“It bothered me because they came to my house and they lied,” she said.

Young, who knows Holmes but not her son, said that she’s not sure she would have given her DNA if she’d known how it would be used.

“Had they been honest, I would have made a decision whether to give them my DNA or not, and if I chose not to, they could have gotten it by other means,” Young said. “I’m OK with them getting it through other means. But to come to me and just lie to get what they want?”

Davis said he would have given his DNA if the detectives said they were investigating a murderer in his family. He does not know Benjamin Holmes Jr. but has met Holmes. “I just regret that they tricked me to get it,” he said.

Holmes and her husband said that hearing what their son was accused of sent them into a long period of grief and anger that left them little time to ponder the detectives’ story.

“I was so hurt, I don't think I could have hurt any more if he was dead, if he had been killed,” Holmes said. “That's just how much I was hurt inside. My heart hurt. I couldn't sleep at night, I didn't want to see anybody, I didn't want to talk to anybody. I was torn up.”

She said that if she knew her DNA was going to be used to investigate a potential murderer in her family, she doesn’t think she would have given it. “I don’t want to get involved — that’s the first thing I would say,” she said.

 

Tina Franke has a tattoo on her right arm of a doodle her daughter once drew. Orlando Police Department / via Twitter

On the other side of the case is the murder victim’s mother, Tina Franke, a retired nurse’s aide, who remembers her daughter as fearless and exuberant and a natural with children. She spent 17 years wondering if anyone would ever be charged with the murder. She got a tattoo on her right arm of a doodle her daughter once drew; it says “Mom Dad I love you.”

Fields explained to her the basics of how genetic genealogy was used to close the case, but Tina Franke said she didn’t know how DNA was taken from Benjamin Holmes Jr.’s relatives, including Holmes. “I feel bad for her,” she said.

Still, she said she had no problem with the tactic. “I’m glad for the end result,” she said.

She wonders if Benjamin Holmes Jr.’s relatives would feel differently if the situation were reversed.

“If they can imagine their own daughter being murdered and 17 years have gone by and they still don’t know who did it and they have DNA and no one to attach it to,” she said, “I think they’d want them to do what it took to find out who did it.”

[Brisketexan 105319]

1 -- the cops can lie to you to obtain evidence.  If you trust a cop, you're making a mistake.

2 -- the cops used a clever way to get evidence that didn't harm the third party (the person giving the sample).  I actually respect the creativity.

3 -- your son probably shouldn't have killed that girl.

[pacman 7370]

Yeah, mom screwed up but society is better for it and another mother may get some peace.

[gernblansten 3197]

[Cajun 11732]

53 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

1 -- the cops can lie to you to obtain evidence.  If you trust a cop, you're making a mistake.

2 -- the cops used a clever way to get evidence that didn't harm the third party (the person giving the sample).  I actually respect the creativity.

3 -- your son probably shouldn't have killed that girl.

4 - cops lie about everything.  Their reports are works of fiction when it benefits them.  They are naturals in the "art" of spreading falsehoods.  Well, some aren't.  They're easy to spot too because they forget to turn off or "accidentally" cover the lens on their body cams when murdering citizens and/or delivering beat-downs.

Edited February 25, 2020 by Cajun

[Lhorn 4953]

Yeah I don’t think I have a problem with this. If it helped to solve a murder, the far greater good has been served.

lying has been frequently done in the past. “You’re partner already confessed. You might as well tell us you’re side.”

[WBT 20662]

Mom needs to testify that she got knocked up in high school and gave that kid up for adoption

[StruggleBus 3922]

If Brisket agrees with the cops you can pretty much shut down the thread. I’m not even going to bother reading the article. It was clearly justified.

[immortal13 4059]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

1 -- the cops can lie to you to obtain evidence.  If you trust a cop, you're making a mistake.

2 -- the cops used a clever way to get evidence that didn't harm the third party (the person giving the sample).  I actually respect the creativity.

3 -- your son probably shouldn't have killed that girl.

A thousand times this. I'm no fan of cops but in this case the OP needs to eat a bag of dicks. 

[Bevo&Pevo 5217]

with a liar you'd probably get a second chance.  murderer uh..nope.

[SHOOTER12 8826]

1 hour ago, Brisketexan said:

1 -- the cops can lie to you to obtain evidence.  If you trust a cop, you're making a mistake.

2 -- the cops used a clever way to get evidence that didn't harm the third party (the person giving the sample).  I actually respect the creativity.

3 -- your son probably shouldn't have killed that girl.

4.  All of you idiots getting DNA profiles done, i.e. 23 and Me, Ancestry.com etc don't really believe that law enforcement doesn't have a key to the candy store do you? 

Also, wouldn't a friend or visitor have DNA all over the place?  I realize the semen was the smoking gun here, but what if she hadn't been raped and there was no semen?  Would all of the DNA in the apartment make "everyone" a suspect?

Edited February 26, 2020 by SHOOTER12

[Poolflood 845]

41 minutes ago, SHOOTER12 said:

4.  All of you idiots getting DNA profiles done, i.e. 23 and Me, Ancestry.com etc don't really believe that law enforcement doesn't have a key to the candy store do you? 

Also, wouldn't a friend or visitor have DNA all over the place?  I realize the semen was the smoking gun here, but what if she hadn't been raped and there was no semen?  Would all of the DNA in the apartment make "everyone" a suspect?

So are you upset a murderer was arrested because "cops are bad"?

 

[SHOOTER12 8826]

24 minutes ago, Poolflood said:

So are you upset a murderer was arrested because "cops are bad"?

 

Of course not.  Just pointing out how LEO's can abuse, and possibly wrongly arrest someone due to DNA evidence.

[Deej 76905]

Rule of thumb, if the cops want to question you or obtain your DNA, lawyer up. 

[TwiceHorn 31534]

2 hours ago, Poolflood said:

So are you upset a murderer was arrested because "cops are bad"?

 

 

10 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

Not the forum for this complaint. This was good police work. If I were dad, I’d just keep my mouth shut, knowing that my son is a murderer and drawing any more media attention to my family isn’t going to garner any sympathy. This is a non story. 

You really don't want to start analyzing police tactics starting with the ends.

With any arm of the government, the ends rarely justify the means.

The means need to be considered independently of the ends.

[Brisketexan 105319]

You really don't want to start analyzing police tactics starting with the ends.
With any arm of the government, the ends rarely justify the means.
The means need to be considered independently of the ends.

Yeah...I’m okay with a little trickeration, so long as it doesn’t violate the constitution or harm a third party. I mean, a cop in plainclothes is a degree of trickeration, and we’re surely fine with that.

[Sandman 3412]

12 hours ago, Cajun said:

Their reports are works of fiction when it benefits them.  

Many of them can't write a report for shit. I was in the office one day and saw a report that was written by one of our lieutenants. It was chock full of "He be, they is, we be" and enough misspellings to make me think a 5th grader had written it. Sadly, she wasn't alone. Not many of my coworkers were wordsmiths.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

Its difficult to see how this was legally wrong, but it also is strong evidence that you shouldn’t talk to the police even as a witness.

i wouldn’t mind helping the police solve a case but the more they lie to people not under any investigation, the more the general public won’t trust them. Ends don’t always justify the means.

 

[Cajun 11732]

@Sandman

Oh, I'm sure, but that's not what I'm talking about.

They just flat out lie.  Example -Get pulled over for DWI and it's, "Mr. Surly, go ahead and sit down here (his eyes looking at the front bumper or hood) while I go run your license."  You do what he says only to read later that he wrote, "...had to use vehicle to support himself/had difficulty standing...", blah blah blah.

They've got a bottomless bag of those kinds of lies that they lace their reports with to get convictions.

SOP

Edited February 26, 2020 by Cajun

[Cajun 11732]

8 hours ago, Dr. Beeper said:

Not the forum for this complaint. This was good police work. If I were dad, I’d just keep my mouth shut, knowing that my son is a murderer and drawing any more media attention to my family isn’t going to garner any sympathy. This is a non story. 

The subject wasn't just about the arrest (which I am fine with), but with the issue of cops lying to get convictions.  You want to make it binary and it's not.  The fact that they (most) are very accomplished liars is germain.

So, yes, this is the forum.

[Cajun 11732]

10 hours ago, Deej said:

Rule of thumb, if the cops want to question you or obtain your DNA, lawyer up. 

Like a MOFO!

[Iceman 2725]

12 hours ago, immortal13 said:

A thousand times this. I'm no fan of cops but in this case the OP needs to eat a bag of dicks. 

OP didn't posit their opinion, but simply posted the article.  It drove pretty good discussion, no?

Edited February 26, 2020 by Iceman

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

I don’t have a problem with police lying to suspects to get evidence. But when they start lying throughout their investigation to any and everyone, why would I not think that lying continues during in a trial while under oath? How do I know that the detective has a moral boundary where they stop lying, and not just when it suits them?

With that being said (written), lying to a suspects mom to get her to unknowingly provide evidence against her son falls on the line of being acceptable but barely. IMHO.

Of course we can think that because we believe dna evidence is infallible. How do we know the evidence was collected correctly 19 years ago and stored correctly?

[TwiceHorn 31534]

Note that I didn't say I thought this was wrong.

 

But you can't just say "they caught a murderer, so it's all ok."  Which is what a couple of people were coming close to saying.

 

[idigTexas 2289]

37 minutes ago, BurntEyes said:

If you don't have a decent criminal defense lawyer saved in your phone that you've already vetted as a good lawyer... 

You're doing it wrong.

I would counter with, "if you feel that you need to have a good and vetted defense attorney in your phone, you may be doing it wrong,"  but maybe I live a too quiet, unassuming, and naive life. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

I used to be amazed and disgusted when I would read about how people in poor and usually minority neighborhoods would refuse to talk to police even if they witnessed a murder. But I understand it more now as an older white guy. They believe the police lie so why give information that may be used maliciously to perhaps arrest the wrong person.

now I believe that >95% of the police are good people. But how would I know when I’m talking to the 5%?

finally, don’t raise your kid to be a murdering, rapist and then the cops most likely won’t be asking for a dna sample.

[Onboard 2.0 9083]

Clever boys......I believe it's totally legal, based on my many years watching Law And Order.

[Iceman 2725]

11 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

 but the sentiment the OP appears to have, and the parents definitely have, is asinine. 

What is the OP's sentiment?

[HouTex 1891]

56 minutes ago, idigTexas said:

I would counter with, "if you feel that you need to have a good and vetted defense attorney in your phone, you may be doing it wrong,"  but maybe I live a too quiet, unassuming, and naive life. 

This.  I suppose it's good to have a DWI defense lawyer in your phone--although with Uber that's becoming a thing of the past for many people, but what the hell are people doing here that they feel the need to have a vetted criminal defense attorney at their finger tips?  

[Iceman 2725]

7 minutes ago, HouTex said:

This.  I suppose it's good to have a DWI defense lawyer in your phone--although with Uber that's becoming a thing of the past for many people, but what the hell are people doing here that they feel the need to have a vetted criminal defense attorney at their finger tips?  

First guess would be drug scofflaws.

before I get hammered, I am pro-legalization.  Just answering the question...

[HouTex 1891]

5 minutes ago, Iceman said:

First guess would be drug scofflaws.

before I get hammered, I am pro-legalization.  Just answering the question...

Yep.  Drugs.  I should have known.

[aggie08 21531]

25 minutes ago, HouTex said:

This.  I suppose it's good to have a DWI defense lawyer in your phone--although with Uber that's becoming a thing of the past for many people, but what the hell are people doing here that they feel the need to have a vetted criminal defense attorney at their finger tips?  

I think it's pretty clear that there are those here that distrust cops so much that they're preparing for when officers show up randomly on their doorstep to arrest them for an unsolved murder in 1882.

[SHOOTER12 8826]

11 hours ago, TwiceHorn said:

 

You really don't want to start analyzing police tactics starting with the ends.

With any arm of the government, the ends rarely justify the means.

The means need to be considered independently of the ends.

South Austins mom's end was mean...

[SHOOTER12 8826]

2 hours ago, Sandman said:

Many of them can't write a report for shit. I was in the office one day and saw a report that was written by one of our lieutenants. It was chock full of "He be, they is, we be" and enough misspellings to make me think a 5th grader had written it. Sadly, she wasn't alone. Not many of my coworkers were wordsmiths.

[Morris] How about tunesmiths? Do you have any tunesmiths?[Morris]

[Iceman 2725]

20 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

The way his subject title is framed, versus the only article, I can only guess. I don’t know and don’t really care but you seem to as this is your second post on the matter. 

I just want to know how folks are taking shots at Gil when there is zero opinion in what he posted.

He and I disagree on plenty, so I am hardly his white knight; but damn... have some substance behind the commentary, right?  

Edited February 26, 2020 by Iceman

[Iceman 2725]

2 minutes ago, Dr. Beeper said:

His title is factual and I took offense.

I understand.

[Lat22 4016]

I watched a First 48 or something where detectives just followed a guy around.  When he got out of his truck, they swabbed his door handle.  Boom. 

[Gene Parmesan 4014]

Did the fake contest for people with outstanding warrants bit ever happen in real life or was that just something from movies/TV?

[CooterBrown 18027]

All cops should have to submit to DNA testing upon hire. Probably clear up a huge number of cold cases and free thousands of innocent people.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13523]

9 minutes ago, CooterBrown said:

All cops should have to submit to DNA testing upon hire. Probably clear up a huge number of cold cases and free thousands of innocent people.

I'm fairly certain that many civil servants, including police, are subject to fingerprinting and background checks when hired. This allows their fingerprints to be searchable for future cases as well. Seems legit to have that their DNA captured as well.

This also would seem to help these type of cases when experts discover close relatives in a DNA search.

[HouTex 1891]

I watched a First 48 or something where detectives just followed a guy around.  When he got out of his truck, they swabbed his door handle.  Boom. 

This. We leave our DNA everywhere. There’s a huge potential for abuse and I will get flamed, but I could support a national DNA data base. I’m also very much pro gun but I would not object to a data base of gun ballistics. Regarding the latter, I suspect guns are stolen so often that it might not be worth it.

[Doc Reeves 6434]

If there is a National database of DNA I will move my family out of this country the very next day. 
 

 

[crash_davis 23115]

What if the DNA swab exonerated her sons? Would the family have bitched about the motives?

Cops are a lying bunch, but I have no issues with this. 

 

If this were the reverse, I'm sure the suspects family would have no problems with this tactic.

Do go around raping and killing is the lesson here.

[crash_davis 23115]

7 minutes ago, Doc Reeves said:

If there is a National database of DNA I will move my family out of this country the very next day. 
 

 

There already sorta is. They may not have your direct DNA, but if your close relatives volunteered their DNA to any of the genetics/geneology shit, they already have most of what they need.

[Doc Reeves 6434]

1 minute ago, crash_davis said:

What if the DNA swab exonerated her sons? 

this is a joke right? Then they would have hidden it like they normally do. 
 

[Doc Reeves 6434]

11 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

There already sorta is. They may not have your direct DNA, but if your close relatives volunteered their DNA to any of the genetics/geneology shit, they already have most of what they need.

Not here. There is zero info about our genealogy in anyone’s hands besides our Drs. and my entire family has made a concerted effort to keep it that way. we have a few people with a distinguished history in federal law enforcement and I will just say that it only hurts you
 

this is a big deal, and the fact that people are giving there info away for inaccurate, half assed ‘reports’ of the history is astonishing.

 

[crash_davis 23115]

Just now, Doc Reeves said:

this is a big deal, and the fact that people are giving there info away for inaccurate, half assed ‘reports’ of the history is astonishing.

 

we are in total agreement here. nothing good can come from those "innocent" genealogy kits. 

[Herpa Derpa 6131]

15 minutes ago, crash_davis said:

Do go around raping and killing is the lesson here.

I think you may have gotten the wrong lesson.

 

 

[Jkwellborn 6733]

I think it's pretty clear that there are those here that distrust cops so much that they're preparing for when officers show up randomly on their doorstep to arrest them for an unsolved murder in 1882.

Well, Brat is the only one that would need an alibi.

I think you may have gotten the wrong lesson.
 
 

He might have gone to Baylor.

[StruggleBus 3922]

57 minutes ago, Doc Reeves said:

If there is a National database of DNA I will move my family out of this country the very next day. 
 

 

Now you’re just giving us incentive to create a national DNA database