pinellas county sheriff`s office

CASE STUDY
PINELLAS COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
MORPHOTRAK TOOLS HELP PINELLAS COUNTY SOLVE CRIMES
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO), located in central Florida, depends on its MorphoTrak
Biometric Identification Solution (MorphoTrak BIS) for advanced latent fingerprint/palmprint
examination and matching technology that helps them:
•
solve crimes based upon crime scene information and latent forensic evidence
•
identify arrested individuals who may give false names
•
determine if any of the arrested individuals may be responsible for other crimes
•
process job applicants to ensure that they do not have criminal records
Pinellas County Jail in Clearwater houses the Fingerprint Unit, where trained
technicians collect and submit prints to the MorphoTrak BIS system
CASE STUDY
PINELLAS COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE
An incriminating soda straw wrapper
“It’s amazing how well MorphoTrak BIS does with poor quality prints. Now, we can search all the prints
recovered by our forensic specialists. We get the results we need with the worst prints imaginable.”
— Bill Schade, AFIS Manager
Like most agencies of its size, one of the main activities of the Pinellas County
Sheriff’s Office is to analyze crime scenes and collect forensic evidence that
can identify and match suspects to the crimes. One type of evidence that
might be found at a crime scene is fingerprint evidence, such as a print on a
weapon or a door handle.
And while some latent prints found at crime scenes include the entire
fingerprint, other crime scenes may offer only a partial print. In one such
recent case, a Pinellas County latent examiner was presented with a crumpled
soda straw wrapper containing a partial latent print.
Processing partial latent prints requires a skilled latent examiner, coupled
with an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) able to accept
partial prints for search against the electronic criminal fingerprint database.
Since it is difficult to determine whether a partial latent print is oriented up,
down or sideways, latent examiners often search these prints multiple times
against the database, assuming different orientations.
In this case the latent examiner performed three such searches, each time
using different orientations for the partial latent print. Each search yielded a
list of possible candidates to be reviewed.
The trained latent examiner then viewed each candidate in the candidate
list, and used his expertise to determine that one of the candidates – the first
candidate presented by MorphoTrak BIS – was the same person who left the
fingerprint on the soda straw wrapper.
The work of Pinellas County staff, coupled with MorphoTrak technology,
demonstrates that even the smallest evidence at a crime scene can be used
to provide investigative leads.
So our intoxicated subject, who was initially thought to be only guilty of
violating open container laws, was re-arrested and found himself facing four
felony burglary charges. And a one-person crime wave was halted.
Saving time, getting more hits
From the front end fingerprint collection to back end system administration,
Pinellas County uses only skilled fingerprint staff. In fact, unlike many agencies
where only latent examiners review and verify reverse searches, Pinellas’
fingerprint technicians have the training, expertise and motivation to look
closely at the candidates the system returns and find potential matches. This
experience is also a valuable training tool for latent work.
But as we have seen, while the skill of a fingerprint technician is certainly
a factor in achieving AFIS results, MorphoTrak BIS allows the County to
work with less than perfect prints. In fact, they have found that more than
ever before, even a “smudge” can yield usable information that can lead to
cases solved. And while other AFIS systems require operators to perform
ridge counts, mark “cores’ and deltas”, and sometimes create latent tracings,
MorphoTrak BIS gets hits without having to perform those time-intensive
steps. This frees up the County’s fingerprint staff for other tasks and makes
them more efficient.
Another time-saving advantage of the MorphoTrak BIS is the ability for the
County to set their thresholds for “lights-out” operation. Prints that meet the
County’s print quality guidelines can be submitted immediately for search,
without needing a technician to review prints in a Quality Control step. Only
the most difficult prints need to go through pre-search Quality Control.
A longtime MorphoTrak customer
“This type of performance from my AFIS is something I want to share with others. In the proper
hands, it “sings” and earns its keep every day. MorphoTrak BIS has changed the way tenprint and
latent technicians perform their jobs.”
– Bill Schade, AFIS Manager
Pinellas County has used products from MorphoTrak since 1991, benefiting
from technology improvements for more than two decades. But an AFIS
cannot solve crimes and identify individuals on its own. It is merely a tool that
a trained fingerprint examiner can use to fulfill the departmental mission.
MorphoTrak BIS enables latent examiners to get hits on even the smallest evidence, such as this
soda straw wrapper.
MorphoTrak BIS takes a serial burglar off the streets
The value of tools such as MorphoTrak BIS is not limited to submission of
prints found at crime scenes. As an incident in Clearwater (the Pinellas County
seat) demonstrates, it is also possible to search a set of known prints against a
database of unknown latent prints.
In this incident, a Clearwater police officer booked an intoxicated subject who
turned out to also be wanted for failing to appear on an old open container
charge. As part of the booking process, the suspect’s fingerprints were
electronically captured on a MorphoTrak LiveScan Station and submitted
to the MorphoTrak BIS. In a “reverse search” of this known individual’s prints
against the database of unsolved crime scene prints, a fingerprint technician
determined that the prints also matched prints that were found at four
unsolved burglaries.
MorphoTrak
Contact us: (800) 601-6790 - www.morphotrak.com
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Alexandria, Virginia U.S.A. 22314 © 2013 MorphoTrak - REV.072313
A trained latent examiner was able to determine that a partial latent print on a crumpled soda straw
wrapper left at a crime scene matched prints in the County’s AFIS database.