FingerprintingFingerprinting on the go -- and on the street
Police in North Carolina are deploying more than 100 portable fingerprinting devices to a handful of law enforcement agencies throughout the Chapel Hill region; the devices use Rapid Identification COPS Technology — software for handheld wireless devices that lets a law officer scan an individual’s fingerprints and then search the agency’s database for possible identification — all at the arrest scene
How the City-County Bureau of Identification (CCBI) fingerprints suspects is not new, but where they do it could be a big step in law enforcement.
For the past four years, CCBI has been using digital technology instead of the ink-and-roller technique to take the fingerprints of criminal defendants.
Next month, that technology will be taken to the streets: The bureau will distribute more than 100 portable devices to a handful of law enforcement agencies throughout the region.
The News Observer (North Carolina) reports that Rapid Identification COPS Technology is software for handheld wireless devices that lets a law officer scan an individual’s fingerprints and then search the agency’s database for possible identification — all at the arrest scene.
The technology is the first of its type in North Carolina, CCBI announced this week.
Money for the new technology came from a U.S. Department of Justice grant proposal filed jointly by the Wake County commissioners, the CCBI and the city of Raleigh.
“We asked for half a million. They gave us $300,000,” CCBI Director Sam Pennica said this week.
The CCBI will use the money to purchase 120 of the handheld devices at about $1,800 each. In January the bureau will distribute the devices to thirteen law enforcement agencies across the region, including the Raleigh Police Department, the Wake County Sheriff’s Office, the city of Durham, Hillsborough, Chapel Hill, and Siler City.
Pennica said taking fingerprints in the field will allow officers to work more efficiently and safely.
Normally, an officer making an arrest on the street would have to take the suspect into CCBI for fingerprinting and a positive identification.
Rapid ID eliminates the need for an officer to take a suspect to downtown Raleigh and wait to confirm the suspect’s identification and check for criminal background and outstanding warrants in other jurisdictions.
“It would have been hours before an officer found out who they were,” Pennica said.
The CCBI director also pointed to the issue of safety. “It could be crucial,” Pennica said, during every element of criminal investigation — from a traffic stop to a drug house raid - “because the officer can positively identify who he’s dealing with. The person may be dangerous, or wanted for another crime. It could be crucial in many ways. Now, an officer doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”
Jim Sughrue, a Raleigh police spokesman, said the agency is happy to have Rapid ID and he expects the device will benefit both patrol officers and detectives. “It has already proven to be useful while being demonstrated by CCBI,” Sughrue said.
The News Observer notes that the device could also be used to identify a dead person. Or someone who would allow a finger scan could be eliminated as a suspect.
The device does not store a person’s fingerprints indefinitely. “Once it does the search, that’s it,” Pennica said. “The prints are not kept in the system. You can [save them to the database], but we are not going to do that.”
CCBI has been using one of the devices at crime scenes for little over a year, with outstanding success.
Pennica said the device was essential in an auto crash that killed four people this year on Rock Service Station Road in southern Wake County. “We had the device out there and was able to identify three of the four almost immediately,” he said.
Without the device, Pennica said, the process would have taken hours. Each victim would have had to be taken to a morgue where a technician would have ink-rolled each finger for prints.
The CCBI director noted that the device also enabled officers to identify a homicide victim last year, and a man wanted by authorities who had tried to avoid detection by giving police a fictitious name during a drug investigation.
Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison said Rapid ID is a “first class” electronic advance that will save his deputies a lot of time.
“So many times when we stop someone out in the field, they have no ID, or we think they are not telling the truth about who they are, then we will certainly bring them in,” Harrison said. “The new equipment will help keep our deputies out in the streets.”
