by KYW's Michelle Durham
The FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia is home to NDIS -- the National DNA Index System. It's the tool law enforcement agencies all over the country use when looking for a DNA match to material they find at a crime scene.
The NDIS Unit Chief is Thomas Callahan, who was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Langhorne.
He says the special software for the NDIS computer is called CODIS, and explains how it works:
"What CODIS really is is a secure DNA Internet and when you have a DNA profile from an unsolved crime. You basically Google other laboratories to see if there is a similar DNA profile."
Callahan took me inside secret locked room that very few people ever get to see, including those who work in the FBI Laboratory.
"This bank of computers actually represents the national data base. This equipment probably costs about $250,000 but there's well over a billion dollars of information in here. (There are) six million profiles from the offenders and over 200,000 crime scenes."
Callahan says DNA technology has advance to the point where DNA analysis takes just a couple of days. And material can be taken now from cigarette butts, chewing gum or nose pieces of a person's sunglasses.
And he credits the NDIS system with giving local law enforcement agencies the ability to link crimes that occurred in other jurisdictions with an event in their area -- something that would have been more difficult and time consuming to do.
Over the last five years, the federal government has given over $550 million to state and local crime laboratories to help them with DNA analysis.
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