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Former Toronto police chief Bill Blair hailed DNA collection as “a revolutionary crime-fighting tool.”
With a blood sample, a mouth swab or a hair, lab technicians could match evidence at a crime scene to the unique genetic code of a suspect. It was simple, scientific and effective.
It was also controversial — and remains so.
In the remote indigenous community of Garden Hill, Manitoba, 500 km north of Winnipeg, police are collecting DNA samples from every male between 15 and 66 years of age to find the killer of 11-year-old Teresa Robinson, who was last seen walking home from a birthday party.
The DNA sweep includes an estimated 2,000 boys and men. Participation is voluntary, the police stress. What they don’t say — but everybody in the community knows — is that anyone who says no automatically becomes a suspect.
“There is no lack of volunteers,” RCMP spokesman Bert Paquet said last week. He expects officers will have to make three or four more trips to the remote fly-in reserve to collect samples. “It truly demonstrates the...