DNA: 12,000 Felons - MISSING

This is what you call incompetence.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A fellow prisoner posed as Walter E. Ellis in 2001 and gave a DNA sample for him, keeping the accused serial killer out of a statewide database and letting him avoid capture for years, according to a state Department of Justice memo.

It wasn't an isolated incident. DNA for about 12,000 felons convicted since 2000 is missing from the database, the department said Wednesday.

Even today, the failures in the system that allowed Ellis' bogus sample to slip through likely still exist, Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen said.

"Twelve thousand doesn't shock me. We know there were submissions not made," he said in an interview. "There are issues out there that still need to be corrected."

"THERE ARE ISSUES OUT THERE THAT STILL NEED TO BE CORRECTED"?

The understatement of the year!

The missing samples would represent about 10% of all DNA profiles in the database, which law enforcement and prosecutors constantly rely on to solve crimes.

...Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm called the missing DNA samples "deeply disturbing."

"This is a huge deal, and it has to be corrected immediately," Chisholm said. "There are no excuses for this. There are none. It is unacceptable from a public safety standpoint."

If not for Ellis, the larger problem might not have been discovered, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn said.

"This investigation not only solved a crime but exposed a systemic problem, so it succeeded on multiple levels," Flynn said. "It is a serious issue. We need to be able to rely on the integrity of the DNA samples, that they are both accurate and complete."

...The 12,000 felons missing from the database were convicted between January 2000 and last week, said Gary Hamblin, the Department of Justice official in charge of the DNA investigation. The missing DNA spans the tenures of Van Hollen, Peg Lautenschlager and Gov. Jim Doyle, who was attorney general in 2001 when the fraudulent sample was submitted for Ellis.

This is inexcusable.

Ten percent of the DNA profiles that shoud be in the database are not.

Not ten profiles, not ten hundred, but over ten thousand!

This is beyond an embarrassment. It's a disgrace.

It's weird to say, given the string of murders in which he's been charged, but thank you, Walter Ellis.

It took an alleged cold-blooded murderer to expose this stunning failure.