Computerized Fingerprinting Arrives At Police Department

By Andrew Gorosko

With the recent acquisition of new equipment, a job that had often been a black inky mess is now becoming an exercise in clean, efficient computing at the police station.

Police are using a computerized “booking workstation” that allows them to electronically record the inkless fingerprint impressions of people who are being booked on criminal charges. The gear is designed to allow police to make consistently better quality fingerprint records faster and more simply.

The rugged new computer gear is positioned in the police’s booking area, across the room from a grimy wooden shelf where a fat, rumpled ink-stained tube of jet black ink lies next to an inkpad. Ink stains on the light-colored wall are evidence that not all ink used in fingerprinting stayed on suspects’ fingers.

Police Lieutenant James Mooney, who oversaw the purchase of the new fingerprinting system, explained this week that the 275-pound booking workstation is “designed for a tough environment” where people are being charged with criminal offenses. Besides a keyboard and mouse, the computer has a foot pedal to control its functions.

“It’s a phenomenal system,” Lt Mooney said.

Police covered most of the cost of the $30,000 device with drug asset forfeiture funds, he said. Such assets, which are seized by police in drug arrests, are later used to acquire crime-fighting equipment.

Police use of the Cogent CLS-1 Livescan Booking Workstation, manufactured by Cogent Systems, will be phased in during the next several months, gradually replacing traditional fingerprinting techniques, Lt Mooney said.

As police usage of the device increases, it will be connected to state and federal electronic fingerprint databases, to aid police in making positive identifications of criminal suspects, the lieutenant said. That will greatly speed town police’s ability to positively identify people, he said.

The electronic fingerprinting machine regulates the quality of the fingerprint impressions made by police, Lt Mooney said. If the inkless impressions obtained by placing a suspect’s digits on a thick glass plate above an electronic scanner do not meet minimum fingerprint quality standards, the machine instructs its operator to repeat the process until usable electronic impressions are obtained.

Instead of filling in multiple fingerprint record cards with suspects’ original fingerprints and accompanying handwritten identifying information, the police officer using the machine types the identifying information on a keyboard and then “rolls” a suspects’ fingerprints across the scanner’s glass plate to obtain electronic impressions. Impressions of palms and the outer sides of palms also are obtained.

The electronic impressions are then printed on the various forms that are required in fingerprinting, Lt Mooney said. When conventional ink-based fingerprinting techniques are used, each fingerprint card must have “original” fingerprints on it because photocopies of those fingerprints are not allowed. Making such multiple sets of original fingerprints is time-consuming.

The ability to use one electronic set of fingerprints to print multiple fingerprint cards will greatly reduce the time it takes to book a suspect, eventually cutting it from 45 to 10 minutes, the lieutenant said.

A prime goal of using the new equipment is simplifying the booking process, he said.

While police are familiarizing themselves with the new equipment and while electronic bugs are being worked out of the system, the ink tube and inkpad will be on hand for backup use, he said.

All 43 police officers will be trained how to use the new equipment.

If a person is charged with a crime requiring fingerprinting more than 24 hours after that person was previously fingerprinted for a different offense, that person must be fingerprinted again as a precaution against that person’s fingerprints having been accidentally or intentionally altered during that time period, Lt Mooney noted.