Fingerprint technology paying off, police Fingerprint technology paying off, police say

Promising results from new fingerprint identification technology are helping point more criminal investigations in the right direction than ever before, says a Calgary police representative.The $1.3-million Automated Fingerprint Identification System, also known as MorphoBIS, was introduced locally in February and so far investigators have seen a nearly 10 per cent spike year-over-year in positive IDs at crime scenes.

“We are now getting a match on nearly one-third of our cases,” said Jan Gregory, a civilian supervisor for the police latent fingerprint team. “It’s hugely successful.”
Just as important are the new clues MorphoBIS is providing about fingerprints found at crime scenes that have gone “cold.”
To date, Calgary’s criminal identification unit has run 930 searches on cases ranging from thefts to assaults and even homicides in 2009 and 2010 and come up with more than 50 new matches.

Gregory said her unit will continue to work backwards on cases from 2008 and older in hopes of turning up new evidence, but could not provide specifics on whether any convictions could be directly linked to MorphoBIS.
Although improved fingerprint matching is a promising development, Janne Holmgren, an associate justice studies professor at Mount Royal University who has done extensive research on crime scene evidence, cautioned that the road to a proper conviction is often challenging.

“(Fingerprinting) is a fairly subjective art form that you are trying to make really scientific,” she said.
Gregory said providing even a small measure of hope to victims of past crimes makes the endeavour worthwhile.
“I think it represents a huge boon to our crime scenes unit as well as the investigators on the street to provide at least a lead that maybe wasn’t there before,” she said.