Once implemented, the Livescan system -- which records fingerprints or palm prints digitally -- will capture, store and archive both finger and palm prints of all suspected criminals who have been arrested or held by law enforcement agencies in Snohomish County, Bales said. The system will also be used to collect fingerprints in no-criminal situations such as when residents must obtain firearms licenses or licenses for various occupations, he said.
"Cross Match's ID-2500 is designed for the very highest end of forensic-analysis use in the law enforcement market," said James Ziglar, CEO of Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.-based Cross Match. "This product is designed to go beyond fingerprints to capture full palm images to increase the amount of data that's used to compare latent prints to stored prints and for forensics analysts to use for visual comparison."
Cross Match announced that its technology had been chosen by Snohomish officials last week.
Using Cross Match's ID-2500 full-hand scanner system, images can be captured and transmitted to a central location and/or integrated with an automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) to help law enforcement agencies improve their ID processing, Ziglar said.
The sheriff's department had known that it needed to update the technology used for latent fingerprint imaging for some time, Bales said. Once in place, Cross Match's ID-2500 scanner will be used to electronically link criminal information between the sheriff's office and the Washington State Patrol. It also allows agencies to search the state database in real time to more quickly identify subjects, according to the statement.
"We have in our county jail used digital fingerprint imaging for a few years and have been linked to the Washington state database," Bales said. "But what we were finding was we were still only capturing fingerprints, and our fingerprint investigators were telling us we were missing a huge opportunity for identifications. That was because what our deputies and police officers in surrounding cities and our investigators were recovering at crime scenes was a lot of rich detail from the other parts of the hand. And we simply didn't have the technology to make those identifications because there was no central database to compare against when we collected those latent [prints]. So we knew that we really wanted to ... start creating a database and collecting full hand images."
Bales said the county also saw a way to update the old ink-and-paper process used to collect fingerprints for occupation and firearms licenses.
"We had to scan those documents into the database; It was a very time-consuming process, and the types of files it created weren't the most efficient," Bales said. "So we saw the opportunity to update that process as well and integrate a full-hand scanning technology into the regional AFIS. What we were looking for was a full-hand, small AFIS system that we could implement ... in each of the three jails in Snohomish County," he said
Cross Match's Livescan system met the county's needs, he said.
Bales said the sheriff's department is now rolling out the system, which should be fully operational by early summer.