Law enforcement technologySpray DNA lowers crime
Several business establishment in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam have been using a new tool to fight robberies: spray DNA; the McDonald’s branch near city hall, for example, has a small orange box near the exit, which, when triggered by an employee (the protocol for secretly activating the system: removing a 10 Euro bill from a special bill clip kept behind the counter), both sprays the culprit with odorless, invisible synthetic DNA and alerts the local police; the company making the spray DNA also makes crayon DNA which companies can use to mark computers and other valuable office equipment
When you think of McDonald’s fast-food chain, the term “high tech” does not immediately leap to mind, but surprises will never cease.
When the McDonald’s down from City Hall in the Dutch port city of Rootterdam was burglarized, its managers decided they needed a new security system. The Rotterdam police was urging local businesses to try something different, which the police was hoping would stem a rising tide of robberies that occur mainly in the immigrant neighborhoods of this rough-and-tumble city. The new system involved an employee-activated device that sprays a fine, barely visible mist laced with synthetic DNA to cover anyone in its path, including criminals, and simultaneously alerts the police to a crime in progress.
Jonathan Tagliabue writes in the New York Times that the system was created by two brothers, one a policeman and one a chemist. The mist is made of an odorless and colorless synthetic DNA that is in large part identical to human DNA.
Using DNA for security is not new. The ability of DNA to carry an ultra-specific identification makes it a powerful tool to pick out specific criminals responsible for specific crimes. In the case of a McDonald’s, it is not so much about the spray’s effectiveness, though it is effective, but the preventative power of the word “DNA.”
Tagliabue writes that according to both the McDonald’s representatives and the distributor of the spray, just the sight of “DNA” on an anti-burglar sign is often a strong preventative measure. Criminals readily make the connection between “DNA” and “getting caught for your crimes,” even though in this case the DNA is no more or less effective than, say, ultraviolet ink. Says the distributor about DNA (which it also sells in grease form), “No one really knows what it is. No one really knows how it works.”
There is a sign next to the entrance, saying “Diefstal Preventie” (theft prevention, in Dutch) — followed by these words in English: “You Steal, You’re Marked” (the operators of this McDonald’s branch obviously have confidence in Dutch kids meeting their schools’ second-language requirement).
This McDonald’s has a small orange box near the exit, which, when triggered by an employee (the protocol for secretly activating the system: removing a €10 bill from a special bill clip kept behind the counter), both sprays the culprit with synthetic DNA and alerts the local police. It has not been needed since its installation, although it has been accidentally triggered “many times,” so perhaps the scare tactic is working.
The city is pushing the use of the spray and sometimes assuming the cost; it is also promoting the use of a kind of DNA crayon with which valuable items like computers or cameras can be marked to facilitate their identification as stolen goods.
Already about 4,000 computers at Erasmus University here have been marked. Creative Factory, a former industrial building on the edge of the harbor that is now home to innovative start-up companies, began using the crayons after computers and other electronic equipment were stolen.
