Urine poured on gay-topic books at Harvard

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Monday, Dec 13, 2010 09:49 ET
Urine poured on gay-topic books at Harvard
The vandalism of 40 books at the library is being treated as a hate crime

Police at Harvard University say they are investigating vandalism to about 40 books about lesbian and gay issues at a school library as a hate crime.

Security staff at Lamont Library said in a report filed with campus police on Friday that it appeared someone poured urine on the books on Nov. 24. An empty bottle was found nearby.

A police spokesman tells The Crimson student newspaper that all the books were about lesbian, gay and same-sex marriage issues.

Library spokeswoman Beth Brainard says it took so long to report the incident because staff wanted to assess the value of the books. She says they were worth several thousand dollars and will be discarded.

http://www.salon.com/news/crime/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/12/13/us_harvard_books_vandalized

[HereSince1628]

1. I hope the idiot that did this knew nothing of cell capture from urine

And that makes forensic DNA recovery from urine a reality.

When the book destroyer finds out he/she/they will piss his/herself/themselves.

[MineralMan]

2. More likely, the moron's fingerprints are probably on the bottle.

Stupid is as stupid does.

[OneTenthofOnePercent]

3. This assumes that the perpetrator has thier DNA on file in some criminal database...

I would have to imagine that it's very unlikely that someone with a finle in a DNA registry committed this crime.

#1) Few people are actually in such a registry.
#2) The kind of people in such a registry are either not likely to attend/corsort at harvard (convicted criminals and former felons) or not liekly to commit some crime int the first place (a person catalogged due to high profile or profession status).

[HereSince1628]

4. You just never know how DNA can help settle a crime.

DNA recovered might not be able to be identified to a known source immediately, but once a sample is worked and the results are given an acession number and a home among the data it sits and waits, maybe not beyond the statute of limitations for a hate crime.