Commander Dave Johnston is a senior English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 police officer

Police officer

A police officer is a warranted employee of a police force...

, currently the head of the Homicide and Serious Crime Command for the Metropolitan Police

Metropolitan police

Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...

.

Johnston is the Metropolitan police

Metropolitan police

Metropolitan Police is a generic title for the municipal police force for a major metropolitan area, and it may be part of the official title of the force...

's head of homicide and serious crime, in which capacity he led the Damilola Taylor

Damilola Taylor

Damilola Taylor was a ten-year-old Nigerian schoolboy who died in the United Kingdom. Several young boys were cleared of murder charges after a lengthy trial, and later two brothers were convicted of manslaughter....

 and the Torso in the Thames Investigations. He also advised the Suffolk police on the Ipswich Murders.

Prior to joining the police force he served in the Royal Engineers

Royal Engineers

The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually just called the Royal Engineers , and commonly known as the Sappers, is one of the corps of the British Army....

 from 1974 to 1979, having joined the army as a boy soldier in 1972 and trained at the Army Apprentices College

Army Apprentices College

The Army Apprentices College was a college system in the United Kingdom that offered military training, education and common core skills, leadership and adventurous training, character development, trade training.-Name changes:...

 in Chepstow. After joining the police, he obtained an MSc in public management and a postgraduate qualification in criminology from Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge

Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge

Fitzwilliam College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge in England.The college traces its origins back to 1869 and the foundation of the Non-Collegiate Students Board, a venture intended to offer students from less financially privileged backgrounds a chance to study...

.

Johnston has attracted some controversy when he suggested that:

• DNA samples should be taken from babies and then stored as a future resource.
• The information could be used to both to solve and also to help prevent future crimes.
• Samples could be taken from people when they renewed their passports and also that they should be taken from migrants arriving in the UK.