Two questions about processing tape (and other items with adhesives):
1. Does anyone know of any research showing that the chemicals used in dye stains and/or that cyanoacrylate can damage the latent prints on the adhesive side of tape (or any other adhesives such as stamps, labels, etc.)?
2. Does anyone's agency have a policy requiring you to process the adhesive side of tape, stamps, etc. prior to processing the non-adhesive side? If so, what is it based on?
And, so no one needs to waste their time, I have processed thousands and thousands of pieces of tape at the DEA and ICE and am not looking for general information on how to process tape.
Our agency used to have tape placed on plastic and acetate and then superglue and dye stain the non adhesive side, and then use wet wop or sticky side powder on adhesive side of tape. Now we just hang tape and superglue and rhodamine both sides. We can still process it that way if we want, but as I am currently our only processor I don't process the adhesive side with wet wop or anything. I have had better luck in my career with just supergluing and dye staining both sides. I know before we switched I did take various types of tape and superglue and dye stain both sides and then used wet wop, sticky side powder or gentian violet to see if it hindered anything. I found that it didn't, but that was just a small test.
I will look into my old emails or find some articles we used to justify what we do, and contact you next week hopefully.
Sorry it took me a bit to get back with you. One of the articles we use to show that what we do is fine (other than testing it on different types of tape) is this article.
Does CA Fuming Interfere with powder Suspension Processing?”, JFI, Vol. 59, No. 2, 2009
