Innocent people deserve better treatment from Met over DNA database

An official Liberal Democrat news release brings the message:

Dee Doocey, the Liberal Democrat London Assembly policing spokesperson and member of the MPA, has today called for the Met to address its poor record of meeting requests by innocent people for the deletion of their DNA records held on a national database.

At present only 24% of the requests from innocent people to have their DNA removed are granted by the Met.

After questioning the Met Commissioner at today’s full meeting of the MPA Dee Doocey said:

“The current situation is totally unsatisfactory. The Met Commissioner has the power to delete the records of innocent people from the National DNA Database, but he is not willing to do so unless instructed by the Government.

“Clear legal guidance on this issue is desperately needed and the starting point must be that it is unacceptable for the state to store the DNA records of innocent people.

“However, until there is legislation in place the Met should at least learn from many other police forces which have a far better record of deleting the DNA records of innocent people.”

Notes to editors:

Recent figures show that within the Met area 773,342 men and 165,719 women are on the DNA national database. 28,239 of the males and 10,108 females on the database are under 18 years of age.

Police forces which meet more requests by innocent people for the removal of their DNA records include Cleveland (70.6%), Cumbria (79%), Hertfordshire (54.2%), Durham (55.6%), South Yorkshire (82.7%) and Wiltshire (80%).

Nationally 5.6 million people are on the National DNA Database with a million people having never been convicted of a crime.

UPDATE: These sorts of problems help explain why when in government the Liberal Democrats ensured that many innocent people had their DNA records removed from police databases.