WASHINGTON (AP) — A sharply divided Supreme Court on Monday said police can continue to take DNA from people they arrest without getting a warrant. The court’s five-justice majority said DNA testing was a legitimate police arrest procedure, like fingerprinting.

‘‘Taking and analyzing a cheek swab of the arrestee DNA is, like fingerprinting and photographing, a legitimate police booking procedure that is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment,’’ Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court’s five-justice majority.

But the four dissenting justices said that the court was allowing a major change in police powers.

‘‘Make no mistake about it: because of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason,’’ conservative Justice Antonin Scalia said in a sharp dissent which he read aloud in the courtroom.

At least 28 states and the federal government now take DNA swabs after arrests. But a Maryland court was one of the first to say that it was illegal for that state to take Alonzo King’s DNA without approval from a judge, saying King had ‘‘a sufficiently weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches.’’

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