CLPEX Chat Board

Searching the prior edition of the bulletin boards, you rehash something from prior discussions... follow this thread for prior discussions on this issue
http://www.clpex.com/board/threads/2004 ... 7/1747.htm

Ducky, that was a good discussion on standards and the level of information needed for individulization, or exclusion. Those same issues are not new but were also discussed over the years before the internet and the mass communication of today. They were discussed between people in sections, units, bureaus, at conferences, or in hotel rooms where fingerprint people got together and the smoke was thick and plenty of beer and drink.

In those threads I re-read this morning I was struck by the concentration of just the number of points and not bringing in the relationship and rarity of the formation. Although in the later threads this concept was brought into the discussion. In other words four ending ridges in the tail of a loop pattern are going to mean a lot less to me than four L2D in an unusual formation and relationship in the core. To steal from Dave the 3-stool story, it is Events, Relationship, and Rarity (weight) that holds the stool up. The word Events I stole from John Nielson (the first editor of the JFI) in his article from the 1980's. An interesting article. Too bad the concept did not catch on. Just like Dave's article of 1988 that has been used a citation in a number of articles since then. The E-C-F just did not catch on. Of course neither did Hubers early articles of ACE until almost 20 years after they were written.

However the purpose of this thread was not to promote a discussion on the level of information that is needed to individualize but that the differences in those that may have practiced an Empirical approach vs those that were moving into a Holistic philosophy is or was as wide and virulent as some have proposed.

Of course the statements that the Empirical view was holding the science back while the Holistic philosophy was the only true path is their Point of View and they certainly have the right to say so.

My point of view is that the Holistic philosophy did not just happen over night. The majority of those in the discipline believed in that philosophy. If the majority did not believe as such then the 1973 IAI Resolution would never have passed.

I have little or no doubt that there were those agencies that expoused a set threshold of L2D, as well as persons at that time who followed that Empirical philosophy. My POV is that I did not know see any agencies that expoused an empirical threshold. Maybe I just did not get around enough.

I was very lucky in working with people who saw each latent print as unique with its own properties. Those properties were evaluated to determne their worth and value. If they were determined to be of value then a comparison was conducted with consideration on those with borderline properties as to their makeup and type and location on a surface. They worked from Top-Down (Bottom-Up today) and there was never any great discussion on a set number of points. Each latent print had to stand on its own.

That was the point I was trying to make. If some got it, great then I achieved my goal. If some did not, then that is ok as well.

You should bring the standards for individulization back up for another discussion Ducky. It was interesting back then and it should still be interesting today.

“There were unqualified people mucking up the scene back then, and the hue and cry was to weed them out so that reputable examiners, no doubt point counters all, would not be tarnished by their incompetent shenanigans.”

Grieve, correct me if I misinterpret, but you mentioned that titling was a process of weeding out. I think that this is a strong point. Isn’t it all really a debate of the validity of the trained versus the untrained? If a “point counter” is synonymous with just a process of solely counting/tracing points in order to complete an identification, then I think in the past there was probably a tendency to train to be a point counter. Isn’t it reality that many friction ridge comparisons of the past were conducted by some officer off the street thrown into an office and told to do fingerprint comparisons. This is not to suggest that there have not been reputable examiners in the past that were trained in a well-rounded manner. However, training and attitude would vary from agency to agency both historically and presently. While this has changed for the better, there are still “point counters” out there. How many agencies opt to have their own department do comparisons because of the turn around time, yet don’t want to adequately train? I personally was a point counter. I have a science degree, I had prior knowledge in fingerprints, and I was hired by an agency to be in essence a point counter. All the agency wanted was a fast comparison of the friction ridges. Did I serve the agency- yes? Did the county PA accept my work- yes? Does this happen a lot? I would guess yes. I knew that I was not thoroughly trained and was scared of the ramifications of my inexperience so I sought other employment. The agency that I left has replaced me with someone who has an applied science certificate in forensic science and has not been to the slightest bit of fingerprint training. It is all a catch 22 though. The agency does not want to wait for a year for latents from cases such as a burglary. Do you blame them? The agency does not have enough funds available to sufficiently train its employees- so a type of point counting continues. And here is just one last question on this- does a “point counter’s” latent comparison mean less then a trained ridgeologist’s?

Tash wrote: The agency does not want to wait for a year for latents from cases such as a burglary. Do you blame them? The agency does not have enough funds available to sufficiently train its employees- so a type of point counting continues. And here is just one last question on this- does a “point counter’s” latent comparison mean less then a trained ridgeologist’s?

Tash,

Just as you believe Dave made a strong point with titles weeding out, I also think you bring up a strong point about agencies who do not provide adequate training. While I see your point about funds, I feel it is incumbant on the agency to demand additional funds to appropriately serve it's constituency. The agency is there for a reason - to serve the taxpayer. And if the situation goes on for too long, something needs to be brought to the attention of the taxpayer:

The ramifications of poor training.

Who is the victim of poor training for latent print examiners? If you think hard about this, it's actually the victims of crime. Most borderline examiners will make good identifications... just not all of the identifications they could have made. This goes far past titles of ridgeologist versus point counter, and this gets at the heart of the issue - training. Who suffers when an identification is missed? The victim of that crime.

The only way to expose something like this happening is to have an external review of casework to identify "missed" identifications. And what agency is going to willingly open themselves to that type of scrutiny? I don't think you will find many.

I was involved in an AFIS project once where I scanned, formatted, and encoded a bunch of unsolved latent prints that had never been searched in AFIS before. During the project, I came across a homicide case with no identifications but there were several fingerprint cards in the case. After manually making the tough ID that was never made, I received surface thanks, and it was taken to the DA, but deep down there was tremendous fear that the "catch" of the missed ident would be brought up to the media.

My point is that with poor LPE training, there are victims - the victims, and I think lack of training is truly a travesty in which the consequences are sometimes understated.

-Kasey

Not just "the victims," but expecially victims of crimes committed after the criminal left good fingerprints that went unidentified. In your homicide case, for example, the killer could have been caught years earlier had a competent fingerprint examiner looked at the fingerprints early on. Well, in those intervening years, did he commit any other murders that might have been prevented if he had been caught for the first one? What about burglars (the crime most prevented by AFIS because burglars get caught earlier in their careers)? Or what about sex criminals?

There are two types of police departments. Those that want to do a good job, and those that want only to present the appearance of doing a good job. I'll leave it to you to guess which one hires and trains sufficient personnel to competence.

Funny thing is, of those two types of departments, one pays well, one doesn't. And one treats its employees well, the other doesn't. I've worked for both kinds and I by far prefer the department that truly wants to do a good job. The other one stinks.

Ahhh…sweet shades of gray.

I agree that Tash made some good points as well as a good decision to seek employment elsewhere, hopefully somewhere that will value their thirst for knowledge and training and provide it.
But Kasey, while I agree entirely with what you say, you are leaving out 50% of the equation, and I think it is that mentality that needs to be monitored. By this I am referring to the cursed shades of gray that will forever plague our discipline since (In my opinion) the act of comparisons is not a science and will always range from white to gray to black. Your statement of:
“Who is the victim of poor training for latent print examiners? If you think hard about this, it's actually the victims of crime. Most borderline examiners will make good identifications... just not all of the identifications they could have made. “
I would bet that most of us would not want to be Mayfield and have the FBI making that call. And while this may be looked at as extreme, I would bet that the Jackson’s, Mckie’s, and Mayfield’s of the world would beg to differ. And while erroneous ID’s are rare (or at least we hope…a couple more in FL recently), THEY ARE NOT SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!!! You are to be 100% POSTIVE of an ID…willing to put your life, your wife’s life, your husband’s life, your kid’s life etc. all on the line (put them all in jail for life if you are wrong), since that in essence is what you are doing. So I in fact would rather that LPE mark a print as inconclusive, then have someone stretching points to get an individualization.
Ideally, we will get to a point where you will have to be a CLPE (although I have issuse with that exam I will bring up shortly) to ACE-V it and have 1 or 2 blind verifications on more difficult latents.
PG

Peter Griffin wrote:I in fact would rather that LPE mark a print as inconclusive, then have someone stretching points to get an individualization.

Great point, and I completely agree. I would much rather see a poorly trained examiner not make the match than make a correct match. I guess the "sweet gray area" in the middle is what becomes more narrow with good training. The examiner is in a much better position to know a tough match when he/she sees one rather than calling it inconclusive and letting it go. I will argue all day long that, given their ability level, that examiner did the correct thing - they let it go. However, I will argue just as fervently that their department did them and their constituency a disservice in not providing the training that would have resulted in the correct match.

-Kasey

I've been out of commission for a while, but I find this thread fascinating and had to jump in, even belatedly. There is a tendency when the identification process is ardently defended as science to view the method as impersonal, and other issues are sometimes ignored. While I do believe in the importance of adequate training, a bit self serving since that is what I do, this is not black and white any more than most of the stages in the process. Historically, the first North American case to receive judicial review to the supreme court level, Illinois v. Jennings, used the expertise of two Ferrier students, Mary Holland and Edward Foster. The original identification was made by Will Evans, brother of Edward and Emmett. While his brothers had trained with Ferrier for a whole six months, minus the frequent absences of Ferrier to do his promoting, Will received what we would call OJT without formal structure or stated objectives. We would certainly cast a critical eye at that today, but for the early years, not bad. Mary Holland had little in the way of credentials by today's standards and was not even a full time examiner. She was a private examiner who did some training and helped publish a magazine. Foster, while he had rank and that mystique of being a Mountie (old Dominion force then, but anyone wearing a scarlet coat commanded attention). He had yet to convince the Canadian government that fingerprints were a good thing and had not been court qualified in his own country. But they were head and shoulders above anyone else, and they just made sense. Were they point counters? You bet, Charlie, but everyone was. Huber, Tuthill and Ashbaugh hadn't been born yet.

The first case, I think, in which the system fell apart was the Hall-Mills case in New York, and this illustrates much of our current problem. The examiner, Joseph Faurot, probably stood as tall as anyone in North America. Not only was he an icon as far as early pioneers are concerned, but he had the nearly unique distinction in the US of receiving training at New Scotland Yard, including instruction from the man of the times, Charles Collins. It turns out Faurot not only made a bum ident, he defended his conclusion based upon his assertion of agreement of points, not unlike the SCRO. The defense had asked another prominent person of the time, J. H. Taylor with the Navy Department, to review the supposed ident, and Taylor disagreed with Faurot's conclusion. Taylor's claim to fame was he had been trained by Mary Holland. I have seen pictures of Taylor and I swear there is a similarity to Pat Wertheim in 1999, lean, almost gaunt looking. Slap a Texas tie on the man and he could pass.

Faurot had the option to admit his error before trial but he did not. (The parallels are amazing.) The two battled in the court room instead. Faurot made his presentation to the jury, then on cross examination about certain marked points of agreement, uttered the explanation that I still marvel anyone would say on the stand, that is, until recently. To explain an obvious discrepancy, Faurot offered that the point in the latent was not really ridge detail, but a "fly speck" posing as detail. Before the Twinkie defense we had the fly speck. We have progressed, as noted in testimony before Justice One.

The defendant was acquitted and Faurot continued with New York for a while before he slipped away quietly. Some claim he was firmly pointed toward retirement, although nothing is mentioned about a compensation package or gagging. I have no doubt Faurot thought he was right up to the day he died. He sold the rights to his name to a former colleague, John Dondero, for a song and sued no one. But the defendant, wife of the victim who had cheated on her, never put her life back together, nor did her brother charged as an accomplice. One constant prevailed, however. She had been maligned by the New York prosecutor in a press battle, and what was not printed or printable was whispered as rumor and gossip. Faurot was about as well trained as anyone, far better than most, but what was overlooked was his ambition. He was a deputy commissioner with NYPD, and the top job was open. He wanted to be the next commissioner and needed an edge. Solving a open murder seemed the ticket.

I can't find where Taylor made any hue or cry for better training, nor did he urge examiners to use science instead of points. No one did in those days. I think Taylor's attitude was that Faurot was human and just made a mistake. We can offer explanations as to Faurot's motivation, but that is just guesswork, and I admire Taylor for not offering this as an explanation. Maybe Faurot's training just didn't take, a common enough condition. But the Jennings case trumped Hall-Mills as far as law enforcement is concerned, and more and more police agencies wanted fingerprints to put bad guys away. Some did so by utilizing what training was available. Others just picked someone and made them examiners by proclamation. Some learned, some did not. When gangsterism flourished in the 1930s, the number of untrained and unlearned began to be a real concern to the profession as a whole. From what I can determine, the problem had a regional aspect, for the worst seemed to be in Michigan where crime rates were higher as well. So those who felt they were doing things correctly wanted to weed out those they knew were not. Suggestions were made as to certification or licensing, but just how this would be done were not concrete or workable. What struck me as strange is not once was there concern for the victims of bad practice as justification to raise standards, and that is a shame.

Today we are enlightened. We can review Mayfield and determine the FBI examiners did not apply ACE-V, that the examiners fell back on point counting instead of science, thus we had an error. We sure can't argue lack of training, although we might argue that quality control was not adequate. We can argue that confirmation bias reared an ugly head, or that high profile cases have a negative influence. Or it just could be that three people had the same bad day, and best effort to prevent such things from getting out just failed. There have been changes in FBI training, testing and quality control to improve operations, or at least that is the best guess, but failsafe, well, let's wait and see.

I think the important point is that we must not lose sight of Mayfield himself and his ordeal. I don't care much if he is loveable or not, any more than whether anyone meets the litmus test of deserving justice. I am an old categorical imperative fan, and if we rationalize any reason why justice is not our concern for one, then the rest of us haven't a chance. If what we did had no real consequences, the debate as to how much is science, how much is external influence, how much is training or how much is individual ability can be fun. But the point is well taken that what we do is not an academic exercise but real life. Or, as I tell my students, trust doubt.

Dave was right this did turn into an interesting thread and I love the history.

My intention with this thread was to voice my concern over negative characteristics of particular groups such as point counters, examiner out of a box, or 40 hour wonder.

I have known good and bad examiners from small, medium, large, state and federal agencies. It is not the group but the individual. Training and knowledge is important but ability and initiative are also worth keeping in mind. If I have persuaded one person that it is the indiviual worth looking at and not where they are from or who they are attached to then I have accomplished what I have sit out to do.

On a different note this thread has raised the issue about not calling the difficult latent and the criminal goes unpunished or more crime is commited for the lack of a some training and experience.

I would like to say that can happen anywhere---large or small---people can miss one, or not call the difficult, or as I have posted on another thread the poor quality of exmplars in automated systems and a miss is made.

I have one more scenario on missed opportunities. How many state and federal labs can on routine cases turn it around in 2-3 days. Most if not all state and federal labs can turn around routine evidence in say 3 months, 6 months, 9 monts, 12 months. How many crimes were commited by that individual while the latent prints sat in a vault. It is called "timely return" and that is one area where the smaller agencies and those people practicing latent print comparisons shine. Most of the latent prints that they deal with are property crimes and are not difficult and if there is a "timely return" then the opportunity to catch that offender with some of the property rises.

I wonder how many other crimes are committed while evidence is sitting in a vault for 9 months.

If one wants to talk about crimes being committed by lack of experience or training then one should also acknowledge that crimes are being commited by a failure of timely return. One should also acknowledge that failure to make a difficult indivdulization can happen anywhere. One should acknowledge that examiners can and do make misses. One should acknowledge that poor quality exemplars in automated data bases can cause crimes to go unsolved.

Cause and Effect: When one has an effect to consider then one should look at all the causes of that effect.