FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has the ability to get quicker results from DNA tests on people arrested for serious crimes, like felonies.
“Once the person is brought into our facility, we would start the fingerprints here,” Sara Radford, a detention deputy at Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility, said. “If they have a felony charge that we could take DNA, that’s when we would be able to choose the simplex with DNA.”
From there, a mouth swab would be taken and traditionally, it would be mailed off and take months before results would return.
Now, because Flagler County was one of 11 county jails to be awarded a Rapid DNA Pilot Program Grant to get the machine, the results can come back in as little as 90 minutes.
Once the deputy takes the DNA, it is put into a machine that searches a database. If the arrestee’s DNA is connected to a case of concern, it will come back with a notification to contact the investigating agency. The deputy in Flagler County would then reach out.
“The reason this is important is that FDLE has a backlog, so if we can do rapid DNA now, it will help reduce their backlog,” Flagler County Sheriff, Rick Staly, said.
The Sheriff adds that those quick DNA matches will lessen the chance of a jail inmate being released before facing potential charges elsewhere.
Law enforcement call this a gamechanger.
“It is when you talk about the ability to solve an unknown suspect committing crimes. Could be a cold case from 30-40 years ago. It might be a case five years ago. But this will help you solve that case,” Staly said.
Clay County is also one of 11 counties to be given a grant to get the machine. They went live with the technology earlier this month.