Cape, Jackson police update fingerprinting techniques

The days of police officers ruining their uniforms with ink stains from fingerprinting a suspect may soon be in the past.

The Jackson and Cape Girardeau police departments are trading in the late 19th century practice of ink fingerprinting for new digital print scanning technology.

Both departments secured the $32,000 technology with a Homeland Security grant through the Missouri Police Chiefs Association, Cape Girardeau police Capt. Roger Fields said.

It is the same technology that the Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department has been using for about a year and a half now, according to county Lt. Ryan Rueseler.

Where in the past an arresting officer would have to get a suspect's hand inky and roll the fingers on a print card, it's now all done on a scanning machine.

Whenever a suspect is fingerprinted, the data is sent immediately to the Missouri State Highway Patrol. On the ink system, the same print would have to be sent by post mail.

Using the digital technology virtually eliminates human error. In the past, the highway patrol would return between 15 and 20 percent of print cards because they're not usable, such as a smudged fingerprint. Such notification could take months to receive.

"You can't go back and correct it at that point," Fields said.

But the machine can detect those errors immediately.

The machine first takes an image of a suspect's four fingers, then the officer takes individual prints for each finger. If the officer accidentally goes out of order, such as recording a ring finger instead of middle finger, the computer tells the officer of the mistake and the print must be redone.

Also, if the officer smudges a finger when it's recorded or the print is unclear due to oil on the suspect's finger, the machine will request a new print.

"This is pretty much idiot-proof," Fields said.

Although the use of DNA evidence is growing more and more, Fields maintained that the use of fingerprinting is not going anywhere.

"You can never have too much evidence in a crime," he said. Fields noted that fingerprints and DNA are similar in that the odds of either one matching another human being were more than the number of people living on the planet.

And the digital fingerprinting will be able to do something current DNA technology can not: identify a subject.

If a suspect refuses to give his name, police can simply take his digital fingerprints, send them off, and minutes later get a return on the name that matches those prints, provided the suspect had been booked before.

"We now can identify someone very quickly -- minutes instead of hours," Rueseler said.

Both Jackson and Cape Girardeau are training their officers on the new technology. Fields said his department should be fully trained and using the technology for nearly all their suspects by the end of the month. Jackson officer Rick Whitaker said his department will finish training by the end of October and taking the majority of prints on the machines.

kmorrison@semissourian.com

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