BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — A new technology law enforcement is using to track criminals could be changing the landscape when it comes to connecting individuals to past crimes. 

What You Need To Know

  • Hernando County is the first of about a dozen Florida sheriff's offices in this year's pilot program to use Rapid DNA testing in the booking process at the jail

  • Rapid DNA machines use an automated process to develop a DNA profile from a mouth swab

  • The technology produces results usually within two hours, without the need for a DNA laboratory

  • The Hernando County Sheriff's Office said it is already looking toward the next step in this process: to get approval from the FBI and from FDLE to use Rapid DNA technology on evidence collected at crime scenes

Hernando County Sheriff's Office officials say their department is the first in the state of Florida to gather Rapid DNA on people arrested on felony charges. 

“It is cutting-edge technology that we implemented into this facility,” said Sheriff's Office Sgt. Jose Pabon.

According to the HCSO, Rapid DNA tests are conducted on people who are arrested on felony charges. The person’s mouth is swabbed, and the DNA collected is then entered into a database, which searches it against other DNA profiles from unsolved crimes in the state and nationwide. 

“It could be a serial killer, a rapist, a terrorist, and with this system, we are allowed to have a positive ID within two hours, versus mailing the sample to FDLE, waiting days and weeks to get a positive hit,” said Pabon. 

For law enforcement, this use of Rapid DNA may only be the beginning. 

“In the future, the sheriff is looking into getting the approval of the FBI and FDLE to implement the Rapid DNA machine into collecting DNA evidence from crime scenes,” said Pabon. 

Currently, Rapid DNA is not approved for entering samples from crimes scenes into CODIS. Recently, one of FDLE's DNA database supervisors said there are many challenges that must be overcome before Rapid DNA devices can be reliably used for crime scene sample analysis. 

FDLE officials said these challenges are being assessed with coordination from the FBI in order to advance this technology. 

This technology has been used in Hernando County since mid-November. As of mid-December, Sheriff's Office officials said none of the DNA samples collected had been matched to unsolved crimes.