The phrase hard act to follow sort of springs to mind. I have a confession,
I'd better start with a confession, I am on the DNA database. Looking around the room I'm not
the only person on the DNA database, because of course police officers the staff are all on it,
not because we are suspects because we go to scenes. So, before I say anything else I did
want to just say that the fact that the families are here today is profoundly moving and we are in
a business where we do with victims, all too often and I just want to say it's just fantastic that
you're here and it means the world to this end of the benches, so thank you for joining us today.
So, I'm going to say three things, I'm going to the fill the middle bit and then I'm going to
say the same three things but in the reverse order from how I've said them at the start,
because I'm talking to scientists, so you want structure won't you and sort of understanding. So,
the first thing is this is a seismic thing for policing, it changes what we do every day, all
across the world. That's how, it is just massive. The second thing is it was made in Leicester,
good old Leicester. And the third thing is that the very first thing it did for us,
was show that we've got a vulnerable person in custody who hadn't done something and
I'll let David Baker who is someone who we are massively proud of as a force, explain to you,
how having persuaded his senior team, that he was going to solve this really tricky case,
using some crackpot scientist who looked like he was in Genesis, who have reformed I was surprised
you were available, and he's going to sort it and then sometime later had to go back and tell those
same senior people, in an era when they weren't as reasonable as nice as current chief constables,
that actually we've got the wrong person in custody. Now that is a pretty profound thing.
So, what does it mean, I also find myself, I know something I think you might have just fessed up
you didn't know? You said heaven knows how many immigration cases, eighteen thousand in the next
ten years, I felt like I've arrived now. So, what is the legacy of that, well in 1995, as a serving
police officer, I remember having to go and meet a sort of scientist-type person and give my DNA,
because there was this thing being created, a database, an index. By 2005 it had three million
profiles on it and of course those profiles, some of those are scenes and some of those are
people. There was a point in the early 2000s when it was growing by 30,000 samples a month, a month
and as Alec has said, you know, we're now at a place where about 10% of the population feature
on that database, in some way, in some fashion and we're also in a place where there's a really
interesting human rights discussion around that, which is seeing court cases, legislative change,
you know, and where we are now is we can permanently retain stuff after conviction.
Before you could keep things without conviction and that has been subject to all sorts of legal
tests and legal challenge and it's important because it's about the kind of place we are,
and the kind of democracy we want to have and the kind of justice that we want to have.
What's it mean today? Well, what I'm going to do now is the headlines from a real case and there's
a couple of people in the room who worked on that case, from recent times in Leicestershire. So,
at 7 o'clock in the morning we get a report that means we're dealing with a murder,
it's a Sunday morning at 7 o'clock. By 11 o'clock the crime scene investigators are
there and they're doing the doing. At 5:30 a key exhibit is found, and people start thinking that
this could have some DNA and it's just what you said. By 10 o'clock that DNA sample is
on its way to the lab and by 6:00 p.m., so less than 24 hours later there is a full DNA profile.
At the 7 o'clock briefing the officers discuss and staff discuss how they're doing with the 20
suspects that we've got, how are we doing with eliminating them. None of those 20 suspects
is the person whose DNA is then fed into that incident room. Now what I'm not trying to tell
you is we're incompetent, what I'm trying to tell you is the impact that this has.
So, we started at 7 o'clock on a Sunday morning by 7:00 p.m. on Monday evening we have a name, and
we know who we're looking for. By the following morning they are in custody, they give an account
of what happens, and we use DNA to disprove that account and by Friday they're charged
with murder and they're subsequently convicted. That happened in a South Leicestershire village,
the year before last. Sunday morning murder, by Friday afternoon that person is caught, and Alec
has made the point, you know, the public safety aspect of that is just huge, it's just huge.
We still work with Cellmark, they are our partners still, they are the people that we do business
with and you'll be pleased to know having moved on from Hypervariable Mini-Satellite Regions in Human
DNA, which is what we talked about at the Nic. We're now excitedly looking forward to Massively
Parallel Sequencing, I mean who wouldn't be. He's saying, ‘you don't want to do it’, well we might
want to, I don't know, which has the potential to kind of hone down what DNA tells you, potential.
So, we get back to the three things that I said at the start, we shouldn't lose sight, yeah, I'm
in the police, my job is to try and bring people to justice, but in doing that, the fact that this
rules people out, doesn't get enough attention as the fact that it rules people in, because both
are really important. It was made in Leicester, Nishan has just arrived as a Vice-Chancellor,
we've had some very worthy, earnest, keen, enthusiastic even conversations about how we can
work as partners. I’m not sure we’re going to beat this are we? You know I don't to break your heart,
you've only been here a couple of months…. but the last thing I would want to say is,
to sort of bastardize Newton, you know, in this room are some giants and by standing on
their shoulders we all see further, and we see further because they, in little old Leicester,
changed the world of justice for the whole world, forever and we're bloody proud of them.