Middle England's enthusiasm for a national DNA database fell away dramatically last night after police revealed that the DNA register will include people committing minor offences regardless of class such as speeding, dropping empty beer bottles, swearing at the TV when Chelsea play and beating up traffic wardens.
Police said a global UK database would create a register of the "anti-social" which would include just about everybody in the UK. There had been growing calls to extend the current register of 54.5 million samples in ways that would leave out ordinary law-abiding folk who occasionally drop litter or let their dog foul their neighbour's drive.
Former Home Secretaries said people with nothing to hide should volunteer their DNAs, while the Tories said those with "ethnic" DNA should be imprisoned anyway.
Detective Superintendent Phil Collar: "It is my opinion that people want a national DNA database but they don't want to be on it. Obviously this is a situation which we will have to deal with by quickly forgetting it was ever mentioned."
Some officers had been pressing the Home Office to allow DNA to be taken from people stopped for minor offences such as minor assaults that most law-abiding people aren't supposed to get involved in. However, the public backlash has been so severe it really makes you wonder.
But yesterday Toby Pipette, head of forensics, said an expansion of sampling to include even the minor assaults that everyones' kids gets into now and then would undermine public support.
He added: "If we started dragging people off to police stations to take their DNA every time they knocked a policeman's hat off, that support would evaporate very quickly."
Statistics show that the early warning sign of a serial killer is litter throwing, bullying, speeding, being drunk and abusive, but this kind of thing won't wash in middle England where this is par for the course.
Have you dropped litter recently and hoped you got away with it? Well someone did because this place is a shit hole.
