New Fingerprinting Technology Arrives in Rexburg
By Ty Perry
KPVI-TV (ID)
December 4, 2006
The Rexburg Police Department recently increased their ability to
solve crimes by adding new fingerprinting technology to their arsenal.
And as Ty Perry reports, you might recognize the new system if you
watch detective shows on T-V.
Det. Bart Smith, Rexburg P.D.: "It's called the AFIX Tracker; it's the same system you see on CSI."
Rexburg Police Department's new fingerprint tracking system is only the second of it's kind in the state.
The way it works is by scanning a latent print into the computer and looking for a match.
"A latent print is the oil that lays between the ridges that lays on top of something when you touch it, showing the ridge endings and the center of the ridge."
Detective Bart Smith has been solving crimes for Rexburg P.D. for the past 28 years. He says fingerprints are the key to solving any crime.
"There are no 2 people in the world with the same fingerprint, identical twins don't even have the same fingerprint."
Police say the majority of crimes are committed by people within a community, so right now Rexburg P.D. is scanning fingerprints from past crimes, creating a large local database,
"The bigger the database the more prints you're going to get that match into it."
The new 30-thousand dollar system was made possible through a grant from the Department of Homeland Security, but Detective Smith says the benefits to the community make this technology worth every penny.
"If you have a local system such as AFIX Tracker that you can tie into, your solvability rate goes sky high. It's increased our ability probably 100 percent."
But Smith says there is much more to the AFIX Tracker than just solving crimes.
"Nationwide, the places that have put this in have seen an increase in their solvability rate and a drop in crime, because the people know it's there."
Rexburg P.D. is now working on getting a live print scanner that will put people's prints directly into the database without having to ink them onto paper first.