Image via WikipediaLast week I went to the Ocoee Police Department to have my fingerprints taken for a project I am working on. I brought Wesli, my 8 year old daughter, with me so she could see the process. I sometimes talk about fingerprints when she wants to hear a police story from me and this gave her a good idea of what Dad “used to” do. However, the process has changed quite a bit since I last took fingerprints from lawbreakers.
There is no more rolling a finger over an ink coated metal plate and then onto the fingerprint card. This makes it hard to get payback with a bad guy by accidentally using a permanent ink which is difficult to remove unless you have hand cleaner. Of course, this would only happen with bad guys that would call your Mom names. Today, fingerprints are taken by electronic means and it is pretty nifty.
So as the tech took each finger and rolled them over, one by one onto the clear lens of the device, I realized that the human to human contact had not changed in 30 years. This procedure still required someone to roll your fingers, especially if you could not do a good job of it yourself. But if a print is bad today, you know it immediately because of the digital image and you can easily rectify it by doing another roll of the finger. Years ago, you had to use another fingerprint card.
From what I have seen on CSI, it is even easy to get prints from a charred body today. Years ago, about the only way to get a good print from a charred body was to cut the bone from the tip of the fingers, place the charred finger meat on your finger and then roll the print out as best as you could. This method seems gross, doesn’t it?….but it is true.
Looking at the new procedures made me feel a little old. As a matter of fact, the tech didn’t even have to use a typewriter to fill in most of the data on the card. I sometimes miss my old Royal typewriter. The new card was placed in a printer and she swiped my driver’s license and whamo…most of the data fields were automatically filled in.
After the tech fingerprinted me, she looked at my driver’s license then she looked at me. The tech asked how much I weighed. Well, I guess she observed that I was about 50, or maybe even 60, pounds heavier than what my 6 year old driver’s license had. But then she asked the color of my hair. Of course, I am use to saying black. After I told the tech black, she looked at me and said, “No, gray”. I said “Give me a break”, can’t you at least say Salt and Pepper and she laughed and said “no”. At least she did not comment on my partial baldness.
I am happy to see some of the new technologies being used in Law Enforcement. The Polaroid cameras are replaced with digital cameras, some Corrections Officers duties are fulfilled with CCTV equipment and some criminals are monitored at home with the use of an ankle bracelet.
All of these new gadgets sober me to the fact that there is a bad guy that perhaps will never be fingerprinted. This criminal has been around for centuries and will perhaps be around for many more centuries. This criminal changes people and things. Maybe it’s about time we apprehend this criminal and put him away where he will no longer turn black hair gray, make memories fade and change the way, we live each day. Maybe we need to put Father Time away…
Gods speed
