RCMP method novel, but is it right?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 17/01/2024 (864 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Everyone, you have to believe, wants criminals to pay for their actions.

If someone commits a heinous assault and murder, the public no doubt wants the police to leave no stone unturned in their efforts to catch the culprit.

But what if turning some stones — even successfully — raises ethical questions about police actions?

Does the end, however successful, justify the means?

The Canadian Press has been following a criminal case in British Columbia, and has put together an interesting crime-fighting technique used in the case of the murder of a 13-year-old girl.

The RCMP had a DNA sample collected from the body of the girl, a sample that showed a series of markers that suggested the DNA came from someone in the ethnic Kurdish community. The police asked for members of that community to submit voluntary DNA samples, but didn’t find a match.

So they went a little further. The police, masquerading as market researchers, set up a fake tea-tasting program at a Kurdish New Year’s event, offering free samples of tea in numbered paper cups — and then collected the empty cups, pretending to dispose of them. Instead, they were storing each individual cup in plastic to protect the potential DNA sample on its surface.

Those who sampled the tea were offered a chance to voluntarily identify themselves for a prize draw.

It’s not clear if the RCMP had a warrant for the process, which ended up collecting DNA from 147 people.

One of those people, it turned out, had a DNA profile that closely matched the sample from the girl’s body: Shamdan Ali. In fact, the match was close enough that further research identified the sample on the girl’s body as having come from a sibling of Shamdan.

The RCMP used that information to start surveillance on Shamdan’s brother, Ibrahim Ali, and later collected DNA from a cigarette butt Ibrahim had discarded, DNA that was a match to the bodily fluids found on the murdered girl.

Ibrahim Ali was subsequently convicted of murder, but the investigative methods used by the RCMP to narrow in on their suspect was not told to the jury, and was pieced together afterwards by the Canadian Press by listening to testimony in extensive pretrial court hearings.

So, here’s the question: there’s no doubt that the RCMP’s “tea marketing research” program was inventive, creative and an effective way to find a genetic needle in a population haystack. But was it fair to mislead more than 100 people and collect their genetic information under false pretences? Was it a violation of their rights?

British Columbia Premier David Eby answered that question when it was put to him directly: he pointed out that the victim’s rights were “profoundly and unalterably violated” by her murder, and suggested he would “really struggle” with concerns that the police might have acted improperly — given that the method successfully captured a criminal.

But there’s that old ends and means issue rearing its ugly head again.

And that’s why the issue has to be raised.

Police have come under fire for “Mr. Big” stings, where murder suspects are told they’re being brought into criminal ventures, but only if they admit to “Mr. Big” any crimes in their past. The criminal enterprises are complete shams, designed only to have the suspects confess while police are recording them. Public concerns have been raised about other police techniques as well: and that’s why we should always step back and ask ourselves, if the ends are taken out of the equation, whether we find the means acceptable.

Agree or disagree with the methods, but always take the time to ask yourself that question.