Can an average citizen get a fingerprint search performed?

February 8, 2006 12:36 PM

Is there anywhere an average citizen in the U.S. can go to get a fingerprint search performed?

Friend recently had his house burgled. Thieves stole, among other things, some audio/video and videogame stuff which required opening a glass cabinet.

He had just cleaned the glass doors the day before, so the only prints on the glass were from the thieves.

The police in a stunning display of disinterest did not dust the fingerprints. Is there anywhere he can go on his own to get a fingerprint search done? (Not sure what he plans to do with the ID(s) if a match is found, maybe provide it to the police to shame them into paying the suspect(s) a visit).

posted by de void to Law & Government (16 answers total)

it sounds like a pretty big invasion of privacy if anyone can just do that. also, without the police collecting the prints he could be in for some hard times on court admission.
posted by soma lkzx at 12:44 PM on February 8, 2006

I do not think the wonderful computer-search technology you see on CSI all the time exists yet. So, no, you can't, even if someone other than various government agencies had access to all the fingerprints.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 12:45 PM on February 8, 2006

Seems like the proper thing to do would be to contact a superior at the police department, and have the crime lab come out and get the prints. Fingerprint databases are generally restricted to law-enforcement use only.
posted by reverendX at 12:52 PM on February 8, 2006

I do not think the wonderful computer-search technology you see on CSI all the time exists yet.

Actually…
posted by designbot at 12:52 PM on February 8, 2006

Unless TV has lied to me, fingerprints are only dustable for 24-48 hours after they're left. Unless you've made copies yourself somehow, it's probably too late.
posted by cillit bang at 12:53 PM on February 8, 2006

Also, there are computerized fingerprint databases. See AFIS.
posted by reverendX at 12:54 PM on February 8, 2006

crap, designbot got it.
posted by reverendX at 12:54 PM on February 8, 2006

Could the cops have gotten better prints elsewhere?
posted by Pollomacho at 12:57 PM on February 8, 2006

Does AFIS actually, automatically, identify the owner of a latent print? The intro to the linked page seems to say it does, but further down is this:
The results of remote ten-print and latent searches are returned electronically and include a list of potential matching candidates and their corresponding fingerprints for comparison and identification by the requesting agency.
So, does the requesting agency (sorry, de void) still have to manually sift through a bunch of prints to finger the one true perp?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:03 PM on February 8, 2006

Response by poster: My understanding is the cops chose not to take fingerprints *at all*. They responded to the alarm system, but not in time to catch the thieves in the act.
posted by de void at 1:05 PM on February 8, 2006

Yeah, AFIS is a system for narrowing down the pool of possible suspects to a more managable number. The final work has to be done by a expert fingerprint examiner.
posted by reverendX at 1:12 PM on February 8, 2006

Best answer: I'm afraid your friend is on the short end of a cost-benefit assessment that the cops do routinely. the cops that responded to the alarm are not detectives; they don't do prints. The crime itself is low on the scale of danger-to-society (although it really sucks for your friend), so the cops don't want to roll out the crime lab for the sake of busting some small-time burglars.

My advice is for your friend to start looking in pawn shops. If junkies burgled him, they probably unloaded his stuff quickly, for cash. If he can go to the cops and say, "I found my stolen property at Fencie's Short-Term Loans," he'll at least get it back, even if the burglars are never caught.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:13 PM on February 8, 2006

This is also a good reason to have household insurance.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 1:40 PM on February 8, 2006

IANAL (but I watch a lot of tv)- If there were a way to check the prints commercially, the evidence would not be any less admissable than if the police were to do it, provided all the important steps were followed.
posted by drezdn at 1:52 PM on February 8, 2006

I'm sorry, but do you have any idea how many burglaries are committed every year? I can't tell where you are from the profile, but when my house was burgled in the student ghetto, even the fact that there were witnesses wasn't enough to get anything back. You might as well be asking them to do DNA swabs in case they used the toilet.
posted by klangklangston at 1:55 PM on February 8, 2006

Another tip: if you have the serial numbers to your stolen items, these can be checked on NCIC's pawn-shop database. In many jurisdictions, every item that is pawned has its serial number entered into this national database.
posted by reverendX at 2:12 PM on February 8, 2006