Criminal fingerprints are more valuable than ever to law enforcement officers in Santa Cruz County since the launch of a new piece of technology.
The Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office and four local police agencies have started to use the Cogent Mobile Ident III, a fingerprint identification tool that links a fingerprint found at a crime scene or taken from a suspect with a county database.
“What it allows officers to do if an ID is in question, or they don’t have an ID, is a fingerprint scan and then a search against the local database of criminal records,” said Lauren Zephro, the sheriff’s office’s latent print examiner and administrator of automated fingerprint identification systems.
Using the handheld tool, an officer can scan any combination of two index fingers and thumbs and, within a minute or two, pull up a criminal record if the person has been arrested in Santa Cruz County. The officer can snap a photo to match with a “mug shot” that shows up on the mobile computer, along with a name, date of birth and jail booking number.
Ten of the nearly $2,000 mobile ID kits have been sent out, two each with sheriff’s deputies, Capitola police, Scotts Valley police, Watsonville police and Santa Cruz police officers.
In Scotts Valley, Sgt. Mark Lopez carries one when he is in the field.
“We’ve used them a little bit so far,” Lopez said, noting that in a little more than a week, he has used his three times, with one match that confirmed that the person tested was indeed who he said he was. “They will come in very useful.”
The device uses Verizon Wireless technology and can be used anywhere in cell phone range. It allows officers to start their investigation at the scene by identifying someone who gives false ID if their fingerprints are in the criminal database.
So far, the mobile tool only connects to the county database of about 65,000 people, and not to state or national fingerprint databases.
“The public has the perception that there is one master database,” Zephro said. “There’s actually a bunch of little databases.”
Zephro has worked on the project, paid by DMV registration fees, for more than 2½ years, and she said it’s been challenging to link the databases correctly. There is no simple way to link state and national databases to the device.
“The next step is to have the databases speak to each other,” she said.
Zephro said the fingerprint software is extremely accurate.
“It won’t give a bad identification — we’ve set (the accuracy threshold) high enough,” she said.
The agencies involved in the launch of the mobile ID units will meet every four months to discuss what’s working and what should be improved. But Zephro, for one, is confident in the technology.
“I just want to stress reliability and accuracy,” she said. “People are not going to be misidentified.”
