Qld DNA inquiry: Not enough cops trained for major forensic ops

A senior Queensland police officer involved in DNA management when a new testing threshold was introduced says information provided by Forensic and Scientific Services was written to force just one view.

A senior Queensland police officer who was in charge of the QPS’s DNA Management Section when a new testing threshold was introduced says information provided by Forensic and Scientific Services was written to force just one view.

Senior Sergeant Ewen Taylor today told a commission of inquiry into the state’s DNA testing that an options paper encouraged adoption of the new testing procedure.

He said he met with the management team in February 2018, soon after the report was produced but before the procedure had been implemented.

He said the lab’s managing scientist Catherine Allen led the conversation and was ambiguous about the effectiveness of testing DNA below the nominated threshold.

“Her advice was that the best option was option two (introduce threshold),” the Senior Sergeant Taylor told the inquiry.

“She explained that of the exhibits that underwent that microcon process, 90 per cent didn’t improve (and) of the remaining 10 per cent that did improve or were a success, only 1.5 per cent of the 100 per cent returned a result.”

Queensland’s DNA services are the subject of a commission of inquiry.

Senior Sergeant Taylor said this was not correct, and that it was actually the 10 per cent, according to the data at the time, that returned a result.

He said Ms Allen led him to believe, however, the success rate applied to the less than 2 per cent figure.

The 1.5 per cent was the standard needed to be reached to be added to the national DNA database.

Earlier, the inquiry heard that Queensland police has had inadequate resources to investigate major crime and the lack of expertise in forensic services has “not seen any growth”.

In August 2017, just 10 per cent of scene of the crime officers were trained to forensically examine major crime scenes such as murder and sexual assault.

The remaining 90 per cent was trained to examine less serious offences such as break and enters, referred to by police as “volume crime”.

But 25 per cent of the investigations required a scene of the crime officer related to major criminal cases, creating a “deficit in our ability to respond adequately” to do forensic work on violent crimes, according to police documents shown at the inquiry.

Superintendent Dale Frieberg told the inquiry this disparity in resources was in place when she was temporarily promoted to the forensic services unit in 2017 and continued through to 2018.

This issue remained when she returned to the team in 2021, revealing the forensic services “had not seen any growth in staffing”.

Documents shown at the hearing showed Superintendent Frieberg had also noted an issue with a backlog in forensic evidence returning from the Queensland Health Forensic Scientific Services in both 2017 to 2018, and 2021 to 2022.

The state-run lab’s handling of forensic evidence and the management of DNA samples has become the subject of a commission of inquiry led by ex-Court of Appeals president Walter Sofronoff.

In early 2018, Superintendent Frieberg was in agreement with Queensland Health’s laboratory to implement a new procedure to only test DNA samples above a certain measurement, double the number of cells required in NSW, which has become the subject of a commission of inquiry led by ex-Court of Appeals president Walter Sofronoff.

The decision to enact this change was guided by a report from FSS, referred to as an options paper, which has since been criticised as misleading and defied advice from its own senior scientists.

Documents shown at the inquiry showed the Superintendent had agreed with the change, which she told the hearing had been influenced by meetings with the state-run lab’s managing scientist, Catherine Allen.

But Superintendent Frieberg emphasised that she had placed trust in Ms Allen and the lab’s expertise in forming this view.

“That options paper has come from people who are experts,” she told the inquiry on Thursday morning.

“That’s where the relationship and trust comes in.”

When asked by counsel assisting the inquiry, Michael Hodge KC, if a good governance process from QPS should have included informing and training its investigators and crime scene experts about the issues involved in the threshold change, Superintendent Frieberg agreed.

She said there’s “always room for improvement”.

In a statement provided to the inquiry, Superintendent Frieberg said her agreement with the change in procedure in 2018 was based on her belief “it was the best option at the time”.

“I am not a scientist and relied on and trusted advice provided by the subject matter experts,” she wrote.

“My understanding was that the option would be of benefit to the QPS, being more productive as well as being more efficient.

“I was also under the impression that DNA staff could continue to request additional processing as it was received by investigators, therefore did not anticipate an impact on DNA testing results.”

“As a result of the choice, I was under the impression it would provide the opportunity to concentrate on samples yielding more DNA to assist in the solvability of cases.”

The inquiry is ongoing.