Slack cops missing DNA 'not to do with budget' DEPUTY Police Commissioner Chris Dawson suspects that police forensic failures occur from a lack of understanding and poor supervision, not a resources shortage. The Sunday Times revealed today that serious criminal cases including murder, rape and assault could be going unsolved because police have failed to do basic forensic work. This afternoon, Mr Dawson admitted that WA Police did not know what the underlying causes of the bad practices were. "But they're not to do with budget and they're not to do with resourcing," he said. I suspect it's to do with a lack of understanding and poor supervision. So we're concentrating on educating and training the officers, ensuring the supervisors are doing their job properly. We're not happy about it but we're doing something about it. He said it was not a problem that had emerged recently. This has been going on for several years, so it's wrong to conclude that it's a recent budget issue. I think it's a systemic issue that we need to address," he said. I am astounded (these practices have not been occurring.) It seems that officers have simply failed to take sufficient samples from persons. I don't think it's peculiar to Western Australia, I've spoken to colleagues in other Australian jurisdictions and the same trend has occurred in other jurisdictions. Slack cops miss DNA As reported in The Sunday Times today, WA Police will overhaul how cases are handled after an internal audit of more than 100,000 arrests found more than two-thirds of people charged for serious offences did not have their "identifying particulars" such as DNA or fingerprints recorded. Mr Dawson told The Sunday Times it was clearly not good enough.