MISIDENTIFICATION – WEST MIDLANDS FINGERPRINT BUREAU - 2010

[Taggart]

FINGERPRINT MISIDENTIFICATION – WEST MIDLANDS FINGERPRINT BUREAU - 2010

I became aware of this misidentification through a fingerprint expert in England who had heard about this misidentification through the ‘grapevine’ and who contacted me after my posting re the Two Check Pilot in England and Wales overseen by the NPIA.

They are extremely concerned about the total lack of openness and transparency over this case. Their Bureau has received no detail or official communications about the misidentification. They are also totally unaware of any such detail being officially given to any other Bureaux in England and Wales. I am aware through my contacts in Scotland that they are totally oblivious to the misidentification last year in the West Midlands.

Richard case contacted me in private about the NPIA Pilot and I took the chance to ask if he was aware of the misidentification. Through the information I have gleaned I believe the misidentification has been suppressed although I am eager to be proven wrong. Here is his response

I am aware of the misidentification, but this took place quite a number of months prior to the trial and the erroneous identification / verification involved 3 experts.

Again, this event wasn't swept under the carpet and was internally investigated at West Mids, and was also referred to by Richard Small, Head of the West Mids Fingerprint Bureau when he addressed Scientific Support Managers and Heads of Fingerprint Bureaux at a national seminar in November where he provided an update on the progress of the pilot. In fact, the pilot was delayed until West Mids had fully dealt with the matter.

Firstly I am amazed and seriously concerned that the misidentification was ‘internally investigated’ by the Head of the West Midlands Bureau!

Why was this not put out to an independent third party to investigate?

I have checked the Website of the West Midland Police Force, no mention of any fingerprint misidentification.

I have checked the Website of all the West Midland newspapers and media, no mention of any fingerprint misidentification.

I have checked Michelle Triplett’s Fingerprint Dictionary, no mention of any fingerprint misidentification.

I have Googled West Midlands Fingerprint Misidentification, no mention.

Why can I find no mention of this fingerprint misidentification if as Richard Case states it ‘wasn't swept under the carpet’?

The Information I have is the print was checked by three experts and only when an Independent Expert checked the print did he discover the misidentification.

I believe the Independent Expert who found the misidentification was Dave Goodwin.

I also understand the West Midlands accepted the misidentification.

The critical issues for me are as follows:

Is there an Official report into the Misidentification and would someone be so kind as to post it here on this forum for openness and transparency?

What was the reason for three experts misidentifying the fingerprint?

Was it purely incompetence?

I ask, as during the criminal investigation into the SCRO Experts over their misidentification of Y7 a major contributing factor was Culture within the Office along with institutionalized arrogance, as they so wonderfully evidenced themselves at the Inquiry by stating how they were the ‘best fingerprint bureau in the world’ and how the senior experts were seen as Gods.

Why was the misidentification not investigated by an external agency?

Could the Head of the West Midlands Bureau remain impartial and indeed if there were issues concerning Culture could he or indeed would he be able to report these as contributing factors?

Was any of the work of the three Experts ever independently reviewed to see if any previous errors had occurred?

In the SCRO case all cases involving the experts concerned was independently peer reviewed over a two year period with every single identification coming out of SCRO having to be independently verified.

Why have Bureaux in the UK been kept uninformed over this misidentification?

As I work back over the years strangely I am unable to find any report or reasons being given for the misidentifications which occurred in The Metropolitan Police, The Manchester Bureau and the Nottingham Bureau.

Can anyone fill in the gaps and tell us what the reasons were for these misidentifications?

For the Science to be above suspicion it needs to be open and transparent.

I really do hope to be proven wrong but again let me reiterate I believe the recent misidentification, has been suppressed and has been swept under the carpet.

Richard Case claims differently.

Show me the report and provide the answers to my concerns and I will be more than willing to alter my views.

Out of curiosity who all has any knowledge of this misidentification?

Can Richard also confirm if the Fingerprint Society has published any detail of this misidentification, which he is aware of, to educate its membership?

If not can he explain why not?

[SThurman]

Sounds like you have done everything but ask the horse. Why don't you call or write West Midlands and ask them these questions?

[Taggart]

Sounds like you have done everything but ask the horse. Why don't you call or write West Midlands and ask them these questions?

From this posting are you indicating there is no information on this misidentification in the Public Domain? This would indeed confirm my initial observation that the details have been suppressed.

And also challenge Richard Case's comment that it 'wasn't swept under the carpet'.

[Steve Everist]

From this posting are you indicating there is no information on this misidentification in the Public Domain?

That's not what I get from it - his posting says the logical answer... go to the source. I don't know the public records request laws there, but going to the source seems a better route than going to Google. You could also go to Dave Goodwin if he was involved.

This would indeed confirm my initial observation that the details have been suppressed.

There's a difference between suppression and broadcasting the information. It seems you would first want to go to the source and try to get the information before deciding it's been suppressed because it doesn't show up on Google.

[Taggart]

Thanks Steve,

I will give this posting a week to see what if any response I get, and then I will indeed arrange to have contact made directly with the West Midlands Fingerprint Bureau and ask for a copy of their Internal Report, along with the questions I have posed here.

I am assuming they will release it with perhaps personal details redacted but can I assume if there is nothing to conceal then they will be willing to release the details to me?

I will then publish their report and reply on this posting.

Steve, you failed to mention if you were aware of the misidentification or not?

[Steve Everist]

Taggart,

I wasn't aware of it. But I'm sure there are others out there that I'm not aware of. Some may be due to being swept under the rug and others may be due to me just not knowing about them.

There are different legal rulings relative to what is and isn't available to the courts and to the public. So me not knowing about mis-ID's is different than a relevant court being aware. But I don't know of any requirement to publish them on an agency's web page, send to the newspapers, or volunteer up the information for Michele to publish in the dictionary.

But if it did happen - you've now begun to establish it into the public domain.

[SThurman]

I am sure it is a conspiracy. I would look for your answers under a crop circle.

[Kurt Kuhn]

Having been in the position of being the third party independent (defense) examiner that discovered a misidentification at a law enforcement agency, I don’t necessarily believe that any agency wants to put that information out into the public domain quickly, if at all. Nor am I aware of any requirement for an agency to make this information public. It was my experience that an internal investigation was initiated shortly after I generated my report, but I also realize that an investigation into such an occurrence does not occur overnight. I know that my findings were also verified by another large law enforcement agency as well during this review. Once the internal investigation had run its course, a report was generated and provided to the local prosecutor’s and public defender’s offices. To the best of my recollection, the report appeared approximately two years after my findings. This might seem like a long time, but I am also aware of the fact that the misidentification did not make the newspaper until at least a year or so after my findings.

Not necessarily sweeping something under the rug, but ensuring that the review is thorough…

[Pat]

Failure to wave the flag and publicly proclaim that they made an erroneous identification does not constitute sweeping it under the carpet. Still, it is the lack of a central reporting system that makes "error rate" of real cases impossible to calculate.

I had to wonder in reading Taggart's post if the concern I expressed in another thread over triple verification wasn't a factor in this case, i.e., do too many verifiers dilute the value of verification? Did each verifier think, even subconsciously, "I am too busy to spend a day looking at this piece of crap. With so many people looking at it, the others will catch it if it is wrong. I need to just move on and get my own cases finished."

Do more verifiers really make an identification safer?

[Kurt Kuhn]

The number of verifiers is not as critical as is the quality of the examination that is conducted by the verifier. A cursory review by the verifier(s) or the thought process - if Examiner 1 identified it and Examiner 2 identified it - it must be an identification, let me get my pen... WIth the proven capabilities of the current AFIS systems, I personally believe that the majority of the mis-identifications are a result of the examiners forgetting what an AFIS system does - it locates similarly appearing impressions and they are not conducting independent examinations (rather than verifications). Some examiners may be mistakenly thinking that the AFIS system is as good as the human examiner. I actually had a five year examiner tell me that with the quality of the AFIS system they had, there was no real reason for any manual comparison to be conducted. I for one am proud to be a dinosaur that cut his teeth on ten-print files, five-finger files and self-initiated known burglar files...

[Pat]

The number of verifiers is not as critical as is the quality of the examination that is conducted by the verifier.

If verification is a quality control measure, then it is the thoroughness of the application that ensures reliable and accurate results. Using more verifiers does not guarantee good results if the verifiers only do a cursory exam or rubber stamp the paperwork flowing across their desks.

Thoroughness should be the quality control standard, not the number of verifiers.

[Michele]

A problem may be that practitioners performing the verification phase may not understand what it is they should be doing. If someone looks for an explanation of the verification stage, sources give a broad range of answers. This may lead to confusion on how it should be performed (meaning that it may not be completed correctly).

From the 'Interpol European Expert Group on Fingerprint Identification - IEEGFI'
“The nature of the verification phase is scrutiny not confirmation. Mistaken identifications suffer almost always from absence of real verification due to haste, blind confidence, pressure for result or a premature broadcasted success.”

Other sources say verification is someone else reproducing the results. This is different than scrutiny.

I think it’s possible that the lack of a standard definition could result in differing uses of verification. Some of these uses may be less valuable than others.

If we look at it this way then the problem may not be practitioners not being thorough enough, it could be that agencies haven’t clearly articulated to employees what they expect from them.

[Taggart]

As I highlighted on another posting I firmly believe the number of checkers for any prints is irrelevant. What is important is the competency and expertise of the actual examiner.

Kurt, I understand the misidentification you found took two years to investigate and report on. If I can return again to the response I got from Richard Case:

Again, this event wasn't swept under the carpet and was internally investigated at West Mids, and was also referred to by Richard Small, Head of the West Mids Fingerprint Bureau when he addressed Scientific Support Managers and Heads of Fingerprint Bureaux at a national seminar in November where he provided an update on the progress of the pilot. In fact, the pilot was delayed until West Mids had fully dealt with the matter.

it is obvious the matter has been ‘fully dealt with’ and also in a very short period of time. Richard Case is involved with the NPIA who delayed their two check pilot in England and Wales until the West Midlands had fully dealt with the matter. For this to happen I believe the West Midlands must have carried out a thorough and exhaustive investigation and come up with answers.

And I also believe their report must have been presented to the NPIA.

Kurt, are you able to confirm after the two years investigation what the reasons were in their official report for the misidentification?

Did it also confirm what action was taken against the experts involved?

Finally without mentioning names are you able to confirm if the misidentification is listed in Michelle Triplett’s dictionary, which appears to be the best source?

I am beginning to fear that misidentifications may be more prevalent than I first thought with many being dealt with internally and never reaching the light of day.

Is Richard Case able to confirm how he knows it was fully dealt with and if the NPIA did recieve the internal investigation Report from the West Midlands Bureau and currently hold a copy?

[Kurt Kuhn]

The case I reviewed is contained in Michelle's list. I need to correct something...I know that the investigation began very soon after my findings were made known and there was action taken against the examiners rather quickly, although I'm not aware of exactly how quickly. There was then a report that was published approximately two years later. The report indicated "faulty analysis" and insufficient quality assurance processes. While the published report did not indicate what actions were taken against the examiners, investigative reporters for the local newspaper were able to identify the actions through their own sources.

I personally would like to believe that the more publicized misidentification cases have led individual examiners to re-evaluate the "verification process" and return it to what it should be - an examination process...

[nemesis]

I have it on very good authority that the West Mids bureau have a 'get it in, get it out' attitude to work and have on numerous occasions mis-classified marks as insufficient detail when in fact the marks were of good enough detail to search.
I also have it on good authority that they conducted an internal audit and found a high percentage of marks had been mis-classified.
It has come to my attention that at times this has been pointed out to experts on specific cases but this information has been with held from investigating officers.
It has also come to my attention that senior management and head of bureau are aware of this.

I am not surprised they made a misidentification with this attitude to work.
They seem to have taken their eye off the ball when it comes to quality which is very concerning.