On Tuesday, the Edmonton Police Service (Canada) released a DNA phenotyping image produced by Parabon in the hopes of identifying a suspect in a brutal 2019 sexual assault. Forty-eight hours later, amid accusations of racism, the image was removed from the media release as well as social media sites, and the officer in charge of the sexual assault section apologized.
This was the first time the Edmonton Police Service used DNA phenotyping, the process of predicting physical appearance and ancestry using unidentified DNA evidence. Parabon calls the service “Snapshot,” and according to the company, they have helped identify more than 235 persons-of-interest over the past four years.
Initial case
On March 10, 2019, at approximately 5:45 a.m., the Edmonton Police Service received a call about an injured female yelling for help. When police arrived, they located a woman in her mid-20s who had sustained serious injuries and was wearing only a shirt in -27 C weather. The woman reported that she walked past an unusually busy bus stop in the early morning hours, when an unidentified man followed her, physically and sexually assaulted her, and left her unconscious, mostly naked body in a field.
At the time, the victim described the assailant as a Black man with an accent, about 5’4”, with a black toque, pants and sweater or hoodie. Police noted that in addition to the victim losing consciousness, the suspect was wearing bulky winter clothes and a face mask—meaning there was little to work with.
The situation only worsened as the investigation unfolded. There were no witnesses, no CCTV, no public tips, and no DNA matches to the sample taken during the rape kit.
According to Enyinnah Okere, Chief Operating Officer for the Community Safety and Well-being Bureau of EPS and head of the sexual assault section, that’s why they turned to DNA phenotyping.
“To move this stalled case forward, our team members sought the advice of colleagues in other jurisdictions who had previously used DNA phenotyping and saw potential for it here,” he said.
Instant backlash
But the release of the computer-generated image of a Black man produced by DNA phenotyping did not go as well as Okere and the EPS hoped. It was quickly and widely criticized as racist on social media. This led to the image’s removal from both the media release and social media sites only 48 hours after initial publication. Okere also released an apology.
He said the police failed to balance the investigative value of phenotyping with its potential ramifications on marginalized communities.
“The potential that a visual profile can provide far too broad a characterization from within a racialized community and in this case, Edmonton's Black community, was not something I adequately considered,” Okere wrote in his statement released on Thursday.
He said police had tried to qualify the benefits and limits of DNA phenotyping in the initial media release on Tuesday, which did note that DNA phenotyping composites are scientific approximations of appearance based on DNA, not likely to be exact replicas of appearance. But, given the amount of pushback from the community, Okere admitted that was not enough.
“We have heard legitimate external criticism and we have done our own gut checks internally to determine whether we got the balance right—and, as a leader, I don't think I did,” Okere wrote in his statement released on Thursday. “While the tension I felt over this was very real, I prioritized the investigation, which in this case involved the pursuit of justice for the victim, herself a member of a racialized community, over the potential harm to the Black community. This was not an acceptable trade-off and I apologize for this.”
In addition to removing the images, Okere said the EPS will be reviewing their internal processes to better inform future decisions. He also noted the police are committed to finding justice for the victim in this case by exploring “every conceivable and appropriate means.”
Parabon still has the Phenotype Report with image published on their website under Featured Cases.