The city's District Attorneys, victims and advocates joined Lieutenant Governor Duffy Tuesday to support Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposal to expand the state's DNA database.

“DNA gives us the ability to solve violent crimes,” said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. “It’s virtually foolproof. It gives us the ability to stop offenders from attacking more victims to prevent further attacks. And it ensures that we can convict only the guilty and that we exonerate the innocent.”

District attorneys, law enforcement officials and advocates have argued this is not enough, because it covers only 48 percent of offenders.

Civil rights organizations have also argued that DNA testing procedures needed to be improved upon before the database is expanded.

Last month, Donna Lieberman, the director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement that “rigorous quality assurance protocols” are needed to ensure the integrity of the state’s DNA databank.

“We’re encouraged by the governor’s recognition of the need for safeguards in the state’s DNA database” Lieberman said in January. “Sadly, New York isn’t CSI and in the real world DNA is not infallible.”

The state DNA database was created in 1996, and has been expanded four times. Currently, anyone convicted of a felony or one of 36 misdemeanors under the penal law must provide a DNA sample.

The governor's proposal would require DNA samples to be collected from anyone convicted of all remaining penal law misdemeanors and any felony.

According to his office, the databank has provided leads in more than 2,700 convictions and led to 27 exonerations of the wrongfully accused.

Cuomo announced his effort to expand the DNA database in the State of the State address last month. The state Senate passed similar bill in January.

But Assembly leaders, like Joe Lentol, Brooklyn Democrat, said they will only approve a bill that adds measures that allow defense lawyers to have “equal access to the DNA database” as prosecutors do.

This issue was one of the sticking points that led to the bill’s failure in the legislature last year.

Victims and victims’ families whose cases were solved by DNA matches were also at the press conference.

One of them was Ann M., from Queens, whose home was broken into by a man armed with a knife 11 years ago. He robbed the home and raped her 12-year-old daughter.

The attacker, who was not caught, went on to rape other women. He also stole from his employer and was caught after the New York state allowed DNA to be collected from people convicted of petit larceny.

“If the misdemeanor for which this monster was charged had not been in the DNA database, he would still be a free man today,” Ann said. “He’d still be out there, terrorizing and destroying families.