Civil liberties watchdogs say they’re troubled by a recent media report that suggested homicide investigators in B.C. targeted numerous Middle Eastern men in a voluntary DNA collection “sweep” as part of their investigation into the killing of a teenager.
The use of a DNA dragnet, they say, raises immediate concerns about racial profiling, coercion and the targeting of vulnerable populations, as well as questions about what’s done with DNA samples after they’ve been collected.
“If you’re trying to build trust in communities to further your investigation, make this something people will find credible,” said Micheal Vonn, policy director of the B.C. Civil Liberties Association.
The body of 13-year-old Marrisa Shen was found in a wooded area of Central Park in Burnaby, B.C., in July 2017, prompting a massive investigation that at its peak eclipsed 300 investigators.
Two months ago, the region’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) announced that a suspect, Ibrahim Ali, 28, had been arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Ali, a permanent resident of Canada, had arrived in the country in March 2017 as a privately sponsored refugee from Syria.
Police would not say how they homed in on Ali. During their 14-month investigation, they canvassed more than 1,300 residents, conducted 600 interviews and identified and eliminated 2,000 “persons of interest.” The killing was said to have been a random act.
This week, the Burnaby Now newspaper reported that prior to Ali’s arrest, police had approached numerous Middle Eastern men across the region — including those who escaped “persecution in totalitarian regimes” — asking them if they would voluntarily provide samples of their DNA.
One of those men, Ayub Faek, fled Iraq as a refugee and came to Canada in the early 2000s. He said homicide investigators called him out of the blue and asked if they could come talk to him.
“When they came, I asked them, ‘Why me?’ and they say, ‘Not only you; many people,’” Faek told the newspaper. “I said, ‘Do you have clue like about why, for example, me?’ Maybe they have clue. They didn’t tell me. They didn’t tell me anything.”
Faek said he was asked about his work and visits to the park and was shown Shen’s picture. He agreed to provide a sample of his blood from his finger. “You don’t want to do that … but you have to say yes,” he said.
The Burnaby Now also spoke with Ariyan Fadhil, another Burnaby resident who fled Iraq in the early 2000s. He said he was questioned in a van during his lunch break and agreed to give a DNA sample.
“I knew that, if they want, they’re going to get an order from court or something, I don’t know, to take it from me, so that’s why I gave it,” he said.
Both men told the paper they were skeptical about the assurances they got that their DNA samples would be destroyed after the investigation was complete.
Cpl. Frank Jang, a spokesman for IHIT, said in an email Wednesday that it would be improper to comment while the case is before the courts.
“What I can tell you is that IHIT strictly adheres to Canadian law and RCMP policy with respect to the handling of DNA exhibits.”
The RCMP’s website states that DNA profiles must be removed from a database in a “timely manner” if the donor asks for its removal or if it is no longer useful in the investigation for which it was obtained.
But Vonn said police agencies should take the extra step of providing written verification to people that samples have been destroyed.
“You should be able to take that to the bank,” she said.
As for the act of collecting DNA samples in the first place, Vonn said while it is described as voluntary, there’s still an inevitable “element of coercion” involved because if you don’t agree to give a sample, that could make you a target of suspicion.
“No doubt police are very alive to how delicate a balance this is,” she said. “In other cases, we’ve heard in media reports people say the officer made it clear, ‘You don’t do this. We’ll put you under a microscope.’”
The use of DNA sweeps has come under scrutiny in the past. In 2016, in response to a complaint, Ontario’s Office of the Independent Police Review Director examined the use of the technique by Ontario Provincial Police detectives investigating a sexual assault in Bayham, a rural municipality in southwestern Ontario.
While police succeeded in finding the culprit — a migrant worker from Trinidad — the review found that the DNA canvass carried out by police had been “overly broad.”
DNA was obtained from virtually “every local migrant worker of colour,” regardless of physical characteristics, the review found.
The scope of the DNA sweep “could reasonably be expected to have an impact on the migrant workers’ sense of vulnerability, lack of security and fairness. It could also send the wrong message to others in the local community about how migrant workers, as a group, should be regarded,” the review found.
And while DNA samples of those individuals cleared in the investigation were destroyed, the OPP “took no steps” to notify migrant workers this had taken place.
Dozens of migrant workers from that case have since filed complaints with the Human Rights Council of Ontario.
And one of those workers is the plaintiff in a proposed class-action lawsuit against the province of Ontario alleging that the results of DNA samples collected in this and other cases have been retained unlawfully.
