'DNA Dragnet' Makes Charlottesville Uneasy
Race Profiling Suspected in Hunt for Rapist
By Maria Glod
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
CHARLOTTESVILLE -- It was hopping at the Aberdeen Barn restaurant the March night the police came to see Jeffery Johnson. He was in the back, grilling steaks, when his boss called his name and pointed him out to the officer.
Johnson, 47, said the Charlottesville officer told him that someone had reported him as a "potential suspect" in a string of brutal rapes that spanned seven years. He could easily clear himself, the officer said, by voluntarily giving police his DNA to compare with the rapist's.
People were staring and the orders were piling up, Johnson said. He was angry and humiliated, but he wanted the encounter to end. So he walked outside and let the officer run a swab resembling a large Q-tip along the inside of his cheek.
Johnson is among 197 black men in the Charlottesville area who have been asked to provide genetic samples in recent months as part of a police hunt for a serial rapist, Charlottesville police said. The so-called DNA dragnet has caused racial tensions and raised questions about civil liberties and basic human rights in the city that is home to the University of Virginia. Some say the DNA sampling smacks of racial profiling.
Charlottesville Police Chief Timothy J. Longo Sr. and the city's chief prosecutor, David Chapman, have defended the tactic, saying that it is legal and that they are simply doing everything possible to catch a man who has terrorized the community. But after the practice was criticized at a community meeting on the U-Va. campus Monday night, the two men said they would review the massive DNA sampling.
"The long-term damage outweighs the short-term gain," said the Rev. Bruce A. Beard, pastor at Transformation Ministries First Baptist Church. Although he sympathizes with frustrated detectives, Beard said, the DNA sampling is a step backward in a place where the echoes of slavery and segregation can still be heard.
"Everybody in this community wants the guy to be caught, but there are other ways to go about it," Beard said. "This is a community that is still struggling with the divisions and hurts from the past."
Longo said that he is sensitive to the concerns of the community but that he also wants desperately to stop a rapist who has attacked at least six women. Although DNA sweeps are rare, they have been used, and have generated controversy, across the country and in England. Last year, police in Baton Rouge, La., collected DNA samples from about 1,000 men as they searched for a serial killer.
Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, said authorities have cast too broad a net, and he has asked Charlottesville police to develop "more precise criteria" about which men should be approached.
Longo maintains that the DNA sampling is not racial profiling, because several victims identified the rapist as a black man. If the rapist were white, he said, his officers would be swabbing the cheeks of white men. But he conceded that he is unsure whether the sampling should continue.
"Is it the right balance between individual rights and what we all agree the community wants us to do, which is to catch a serial rapist?" Longo asked.
The rapist first struck the Charlottesville community in 1997, police said, and his last confirmed assault was in April 2003. In November 2002, a woman was assaulted when she returned home from taking her children to school and was beaten so badly that she needed reconstructive surgery, Longo said.
Longo stressed that officers are not stopping black men at random. In most cases, he said, police are responding to reports from residents about men who resemble a composite sketch of the suspect or who seem to be acting strangely.
So far, the names of 690 "candidates" have surfaced in the investigation, Longo said. Detectives quickly eliminated 400 because their DNA samples already were in the state database or because they were in jail when one of the attacks occurred.
Of the other men, 99 were placed on the list when someone reported that they resembled the sketch, Longo said. He said 116 were added because someone reported "suspicious behavior." The remaining 75 had criminal histories.
Longo said his officers asked 197 of the men for DNA samples. All but 10 agreed, he said.
The swabs are sent to the state crime laboratory in Richmond, where they are compared with the rapist's DNA, police said. The DNA profiles are not entered into the state database, and the swabs are returned to the Charlottesville police and will be held until the rapist goes to trial. They will not be used for any other reason or for any other case, police said. "There's this picture out there that hundreds of people have had a Q-tip stuck in their mouths, and that ain't it," Longo said.
Stephen Gottlieb, a professor at Albany Law School, said that similar practices are being challenged in court but that police are acting legally if they have reason to suspect someone and then ask that person to provide a genetic sample.
But the criteria police are using seem weak to Steven Turner, 27, a graduate student at U-Va.'s Curry School of Education, who twice has been asked to provide a DNA sample and twice refused.
"The suspect is a black man, and he needs to be caught," Turner said. "But the way the police are conducting this investigation, because the suspect is a black man, every black man is a suspect."
Turner said he was first approached by police on a balmy August night as he rode his bicycle. A police van pulled up, he said, and the officer who jumped out told him that someone had reported that he was acting suspiciously. The officer then told him that he resembled the serial rapist and asked for a DNA sample.
After the police left, Turner said, he rode around in circles for a long time. "I felt broken," he said. "I felt like I didn't have a home anymore. It was devastating."
A few weeks later, Turner said, police visited his home and again asked for a sample. This time, Turner said, he got angry.
Johnson, the cook at the Aberdeen Barn, still wonders why he was approached. He sees no resemblance between himself and the sketch. Perhaps, he said, someone thought he looked out of place when he stopped recently at a gas station near the area of one of the rapes. He said he wonders whether he should have refused to give a sample.
"I was mad. It was in a pressure situation. I had to get back to my post," Johnson said. "But the rest of the night, I'm tripping over my feet, can't concentrate on my job."
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