OPD uses fingerprint analysis to crack tough cases

February 4, 2019 | 3:24 am

Updated February 3, 2019 | 8:56 pm

Graphic by Owensboro Times

The Owensboro Police Department’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) has been utilized since 2008 to determine positive fingerprint and palmprint identifications. While the advanced computer system is only one of six being used across the state of Kentucky, the most important component in identifying positive print matches comes from human analysis.

At OPD, Officer Jim Parham, the crime scene unit supervisor, is one of only three people in Kentucky to be certified by the International Association of Identification. Parham started training under a retired Secret Service fingerprint examiner in 2008, but it took him six years to feel comfortable enough to take the eight-hour exam, he said.

“There’s only a thousand of us certified in the world. It’s a very lengthy process,” Parham said. “You have to literally perform thousands and thousands of print comparisons to understand what those baselines are. To know that this latent print from a scene was produced by this particular inked print from a known person.”

Throughout his 20 years of service for OPD, Parham said getting his latent print certification was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do as a police officer.

“But it’s also been the most rewarding because we’ve identified so many more bad guys using this system,” Parham said. “The equipment, even as expensive as it is, it’s actually the easiest part. The most difficult part is having trained personnel to conduct the comparisons and conduct the analysis.”

Before OPD received their $76,000 AFIS technology through a Homeland Security grant in 2008, the department sent latent fingerprints taken from local crime scenes to Frankfort. In 2008, the crime lab was so backlogged that OPD had to wait anywhere between 12 and 18 months to get answers.

“That’s a long time for a bad guy to go unidentified, or continue committing crimes and things like that,” Parham said, adding that it was an especially painstaking wait during abduction cases.

OPD is now equipped with a full-service latent print lab that includes chemical processing equipment, photography and print powder lifting, allowing officers to identify positive print matches within 24 hours of a crime being committed.

Parham said OPD sees about 200 latent print cases a year, and a positive identification is made in about 60 to 70 of those cases. Sometimes the process reveals identification of, not only a suspect, but of a victim or witness involved with a crime.

Parham first studies a latent print taken from a crime scene, observing and marking it for specific characteristics called minutiae points. Parham sends the latent print with those marked minutiae points through AFIS to Frankfort.

While showing how the system operates, Parham sent a latent print he’d analyzed from a November first-degree assault shooting case in Owensboro. In less than five minutes, Parham received 10 returns of inked prints that had similar characteristics to the latent print he sent.

“The system doesn’t come back and say, ‘This is your guy.’ All it says is ‘These may be close and may be worth looking at.’ TV has killed us on the realities of ‘Here’s your guy!’ It doesn’t work like that,” Parham said.

A side-by-side examination of the different inked prints next to Parham’s latent print revealed similar characteristics between the two, as well as a one through 10 “match score” determined by the computer system. The highest match score Parham’s latent print received was a 1.4.

“This print’s strongest match score was 1,415, which isn’t very impressive,” Parham said. “We try not to rely too much on the scores because, really, the science is a science. We do the comparison, and that’s how we determine whether it’s an identification or not.”

It doesn’t take too long for Parham to determine that none of the ten inked prints are a match for his. Parham said this often happens with juvenile prints because those under 18 years of age usually haven’t been booked into the system.

Terminology gets thrown around casually as Parham describes the process of analyzing these prints. Words like “ridges,” “core,” “shoulders,” “rods,” “deltas,” “arches” and “loops” are just a few of the descriptions Parham uses to define print characteristics he sees on the screen.

Though Parham is usually the man behind the scenes, he’s often the first person who cracks these cases. Those are the moments when Parham feels most fulfilled in his line of work.

“It’s been a lot of fun. I really, really enjoy it. It is extremely rewarding — especially in those cases where there’s no lead on the case at all,” Parham said. “There’s that moment when you search a print, and you do get an identification back, and there’s a few minutes when you’re sitting there, and you’re the only one who knows. You’re the only one who knows who this bad guy is, and it’s going to break the case wide open.”

February 4, 2019 | 3:24 am

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