PUBLICATION:        The Edmonton Sun 

DATE:                         2003.10.17

EDITION:                    Final 

SECTION:                  News 

PAGE:                         7 

BYLINE:                     DOUG BEAZLEY, EDMONTON SUN 

COLUMN:                  Inside Story 

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PUT A DOLLAR VALUE ON STOPPING A RAPIST

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Who cares to put a price on Paul Bernardo's head? What would it have been worth to us to thwart his terrible career of rape and murder before it really got started?

In the late 1980s, a vicious serial rapist was stalking the streets of Scarborough, Ont. Police were sitting on a stack of evidence, including solid DNA samples from semen swabs taken from the Scarborough Rapist's victims.

An anonymous tipster fingered Bernardo as the rapist. Police interviewed Bernardo, who bore an astonishing resemblance to a composite sketch based on a victim's description of her attacker. 

He gave every appearance of co-operating with police; he even volunteered hair and fluid samples for DNA comparison.

But it was another 26 months before swamped forensic technicians got around to typing Bernardo's samples and identifying him as the rapist.

In the meantime, Bernardo's tastes had shifted to murder. The rest you know.

The RCMP are in the midst of a much-hyped "reorganization" of forensic services, expected to lead to the shutdown of DNA services at their Edmonton lab.

The Mounties insist this "consolidation" will shorten average waiting times for DNA tests in both urgent and non-urgent cases. Few in the forensic field appear to be convinced.

"They're only making matters worse," said former RCMP forensics expert Dave Hepworth. "They're throwing a ton of resources into administration, but they're asking 10 people to do the same work as 20 did before. How is this supposed to speed things up?"

There's vast room for improvement: internal RCMP statistics obtained by the press show that in the first eight months of 2003, only about a quarter of "urgent" forensic DNA inquiries were completed within the Mounties' own benchmark deadline of 15 days.

Urgent cases cover the worst of the worst: serial murders, violent sexual assaults and terrorism.

The average current completion time for an urgent DNA test is 55 days - plenty of time for a serial killer or rapist to carve a few more notches.

The Mounties claim their controversial plan to consolidate DNA services in Ottawa will cut the backlog and speed up service.

Hepworth believes it will rob regional police services of on-the-spot expertise they need to get the samples that will win convictions.

"A lot of the work is sample collection. We used to be brought in to sweep things like automobile undercarriages, refrigerators," he said. "Are they supposed to mail that stuff to Ottawa now?"

The problem is money (the problem is always money). The RCMP have been routinely starved of public resources, and now have to make their DNA service do more with less.

But what price are we really paying? Ray Wickenheiser was 16 years with the RCMP before joining a DNA lab in the U.S. He's written a paper to be published in the Journal of Biosciences and Law which compares the cost of sexual assaults to DNA testing.

"The best analysis in the U.S. estimates that each sexual assault case costs the victim an average of $87,000 through things like lost time at work and medical costs," he said.

"That's not including the cost to the justice system should someone actually be charged.

"About 34% of sexual assaults in the States are attributed to unknown assailants. Usually, DNA testing is our best bet for identifying these people.

"The average sex offender commits eight sexual assaults before he's caught. If he's caught after the first sexual assault, another seven sexual assaults might never happen as a result.

"Break it down, and you could save the nation $12 billion a year just by doing DNA testing in every applicable sexual assault case. And that's just the fiscal argument."

DNA testing is the most powerful forensic tool to come along since the invention of fingerprinting.

The Mounties' massive backlog shows how the technology has been made a victim of its own success.

How many more rapes and murders might take place because of delays in testing? We may never know.

One thing we do know: money can fix this.

Hepworth estimates another $5 million a year could beat the backlog down - chicken feed compared to the $1 billion our federal government has squandered on a gun registry which has yet to save a single life.

What a warped sense of priorities. What a bloody waste.