It is reasonable, under the Fourth Amendment, to compel the collection of DNA from police officers in order to eliminate them as possible sources of crime scene contamination.
Bill v. Brewer, 2015 BL 280656, 9th Cir., No. 13-15844, 8/31/15
The Ninth Circuit indicated that the effort to exclude the officers as contributors of DNA is justification enough to conduct buccal swabs. The opinion ruled that a specific warrant was not required because court orders satisfy the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement.
The court determined that "excluding public safety personnel as the source of DNA would plainly 'aid in' the conviction of an eventual criminal defendant, by negating any contention at trial that police had contaminated the relevant evidence." This means that it did not matter that the plaintiffs in this case were police officers, and not suspects.
The level of intrusion here is not disproportionate to the likely benefits. The court indicated that it was reasonable for the state to "ask sworn officers to provide saliva samples for the sole purpose of demonstrating that DNA left at a crime scene was not the result of inadvertent contamination by on-duty public safety personnel."
http://www2.bloomberglaw.com/public/desktop/document/Bill_v_Brewer_No_1315844_2015_BL_280656_9th_Cir_Aug_31_2015_Court
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