In DNA era, police print lab still crime-solving workhorse | The...
http://www.pressherald.com/news/lab-helps-link-prints-to-crim...
65°
Cloudy
RealFeel® 65°
High: 85° | Low: 67°
High Tide: 12:01AM
Low Tide: 6:27AM
News
Jobs
Sports
Cars
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Business
Real Estate
Opinion
Deals
Life & Culture
People
Maine Yellow Pages
Save This Story E-mail This Story Print This Story
Obituaries
Connect With Us
blogs
Large Type
June 12
In DNA era, police print lab still crime-solving workhorse
Greater Portland's metropolitan crime laboratory has in the past 2½ years linked
fingerprints taken from 295 crime scenes to prints collected at the county jail, identifying
suspects and closing cases.
By David Hench [email protected]
Staff Writer
Classified Ads
facebook
twitter
Most...
READ
SHARED
COMMENTED
Lawsuit claims Maine Med retaliated against
employee
Alligator found in NH pond is second found there
Body of missing Maine swimmer found in China
Lake
Last month, a Portland woman reported that a stranger broke into her High Street apartment and tried to rape her.
A harder sell for soft-shells?
She didn't know him, and police had only a vague
description to work with, but within a few hours officers
identified the suspect, and tracked him to a West End
apartment just two days after the attack.
Evidence technicians had retrieved a fingerprint from a foil
condom wrapper, downloaded it into the regional crime
lab's automated fingerprint identification system and
matched it with Mohammed Mukhtar, an 18-year-old who
had been arrested -- and fingerprinted -- for allegedly
driving without a license a month earlier.
While the cutting-edge science of DNA analysis gets a lot
of the glory in forensics, fingerprints -- and increasingly,
palm prints -- remain a workhorse of crime scene
investigation.
Portland Police Department evidence
technician Frank Pellerin examines a
palm print on his computer monitor.
click image to enlarge
Photos by John Ewing/Staff Photographer
The palm is in many ways like a giant fingerprint,
containing the same complex and unique combination of
whorls and loops. Even when there are no usable
fingerprints, evidence technicians can sometimes lift
enough of a palm print to get a match.
Greater Portland's Metropolitan Regional Crime Laboratory
has in the past two and a half years linked fingerprints
taken from 295 crime scenes -- called latent prints -- to
prints collected by corrections officers at the Cumberland
County Jail, identifying suspects and closing cases.
In the 18 months since the jail began taking palm prints as
part of its routine intake process, palm prints collected at
crime scenes have been matched to offenders 65 times.
A close-up of a palm print is shown on
Pellerin’s computer.
click image to enlarge
ADDITIONAL PHOTOS BELOW
Select images available for purchase in the
Maine Today Photo Store
The automated fingerprint/palm print identification system
consists of an extremely powerful desktop computer and a
flatbed -- albeit state of the art -- scanner, which cost $45,000 and $30,000, respectively.
"I think that by far it's assisted us in solving more crimes than any other piece of equipment we've been able to
purchase," said Assistant Chief Vern Malloch of the Portland Police Department, where the regional crime lab is housed.
Recent Activity
Login
You need to be logged into Facebook to
see your friends' recent activity.
Giant lobster caught off Maine's coast |
The Portland Press Herald / Maine
Sunday Telegram
The lab's success rate is so high that the manufacturer, SPEX Forensics, is using it to market its products.
258 people recommend this.
The key to the lab's success has been its ability to electronically scan and compare prints quickly.
Falmouth High championship party ends
with arrests | The Portland Press Herald
/ Maine Sunday Telegr
When a person is booked into the county jail, corrections officers scan prints electronically, and those digital images are
automatically compared with all latent prints in the database.
"It's only a couple minutes, but you take a busy night with 15 or 16 people coming in and half of them intoxicated, it can
be difficult. But the payback has been pretty good," said Cumberland County Sheriff Kevin Joyce, who oversees the jail
and whose law enforcement division participates in the regional lab.
10 people recommend this.
Facebook social plugin
The jail has long served as a repository of information about offenders, including vital statistics, identifying marks and
1 of 3
6/19/12 8:45 PM
In DNA era, police print lab still crime-solving workhorse | The...
http://www.pressherald.com/news/lab-helps-link-prints-to-crim...
mug shots. It makes sense to collect electronic fingerprint information from all offenders the jail processes, even if their
infractions are minor, Joyce said.
"If you spend extra time today fingerprinting somebody coming in for a driving offense ... they may be a burglary suspect
on down the road," Joyce said.
The lab has archived 20,450 sets of fingerprints -- although some are multiple sets from the same offender because
they're taken each time a person is booked at the jail. It has archived 10,500 palm prints.
Of these, 1,227 fingerprints and 135 palm prints collected from crime scenes are from unknown persons.
When prints are collected from a crime scene, they are scanned into the system and immediately compared to all known
offenders and existing crime scene prints in the system.
The "hit rate" for the number of latent prints that match with a known offender's prints exceeds 20 percent.
When the computer suggests a possible match, a person trained in print comparison will check to see whether in fact
there is a "hit."
Bangor uses the same system as Greater Portland, but is still loading prints from previous crimes into its database. It's a
time-consuming process because someone has to go into each case file and determine whether any prints were
gathered.
Neither Bangor nor Greater Portland can search the state's database electronically, because the proprietary software
each uses doesn't communicate. To do a statewide search, investigators from each county must submit a copy of prints
collected from a crime scene for the state to analyze against its database.
Bangor and Portland eventually will be able to search each other's databases, however, because they both use the
same system, said Bangor Detective Larry Morrill.
Malloch said directors of the regional lab understood when purchasing its system that it wouldn't be able to communicate
with the state. But the system was more affordable and better met the needs of departments participating in the regional
lab.
Also, most crimes -- some estimates suggest about 90 percent -- are committed by local offenders, Malloch said. Police
can still send prints to the state, which can compare them to the northern New England database.
The automated print systems won't solve every crime. Usable prints are only recovered from about 30 percent of crime
scenes, Malloch said.
In the past, palm prints were only collected for so-called major crimes. But the scanners make it easy to collect them.
Now, every county jail in the state scans fingerprints and palm prints, said Kim Stevens, senior lab scientist at the State
Crime Lab. They are sent to the state for inclusion in the State Bureau of Identification database. The state shares with
federal authorities.
Maine State Police Lt. William Harwood said that even though the Greater Portland lab can't automatically check the
state's database, it can email in the images to the State Crime Lab.
The check is not immediate, but the backlog of roughly 40 cases is much smaller than the 300 it was just a few years
ago, he said.
Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at: [email protected]
Were you interviewed for this story? If so, please fill out our accuracy form
Send Question/Comment to the Publisher
Recommend
4 people recommend this.
Tweet
0
Additional Photos
click image to enlarge
A booking
officer
scans a palm in the intake area at
the Cumberland County Jail in
Portland last week.
Tim Greenway/Staff Photographer
2 of 3
6/19/12 8:45 PM
In DNA era, police print lab still crime-solving workhorse | The...
http://www.pressherald.com/news/lab-helps-link-prints-to-crim...
Further Discussion
Here at PressHerald.com we value our readers and are committed to growing our community by encouraging you to add to
the discussion. To ensure conscientious dialogue we have implemented a strict no-bullying policy. To participate, you must
follow our Terms of Use.
Questions about the article? Add them below and we’ll try to answer them or do a follow-up post as soon as we can.
Technical problems? Email them to us with an exact description of the problem. Make sure to include:
Type of computer or mobile device your are using
Exact operating system and browser you are viewing the site on (TIP: You can easily determine your operating
system here.)
Like
Add New Comment
Required: Please login below to comment.
Type your comment here.
Image
Post as …
Showing 2 comments
Sort by Popular now
Subscribe by email
Subscribe by RSS
Real-time updating is enabled. (Pause)
NOBama316 1 week ago
So 45 thousand for the scanner system and they have 3 reams of paper to hold up the monitor. That's high-tech!
J34MAB and 2 more liked this
Like
Reply
Like
Reply
phantom2driver 1 week ago
Most up to date, modern law enforcement agencies have had this technology and better for years.
Trackback URL
http://disqus.com/forums/theportlandpressherald/
Home | News | Weather | Sports | Business | Opinion | Blogs | Obituaries | Classified Ads
Place an Online Ad | Place a Print Ad | Place a Classified Ad | Privacy Policy | Reader Services | Contact us
Copyright ©2012 MaineToday Media, Inc.
3 of 3
6/19/12 8:45 PM