CLPEX Chat Board

Again, a disservice to Latent Print Examiners by the media. The Examiner who identified the latent print in this case, Gloria Pasqual from San Diego Police Dept.'s Latent Print Unit, is never even mentioned - not even by the homicide Sgt. or the cold case intern herself. I know most of us have helped to solve cases where the "investigator" publicly receives the credit for solving the case but I don't believe I've ever seen such a blatant disregard for the teamwork involved in bringing these cases to justice as I do in this particular story.

Intern cracks cold murder case ... after 36 years
The family of Gerald Jackson had despaired of ever learning who killed the Vietnam vet, found brutally murdered in his apartment in January 1972. But now, thanks to an intern at the San Diego Police Department, a suspect has been arrested.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27335906/from/ET/

Well, "the media" didn't do it. (Popular theme this year, blaming the media.) They pretty much know only what they're told. Sounds like they might reasonably assume the FBI did the match, and - well- that's not news. That's just what they (and the local examiner) do. A cold case story is an okay news story. The intern thing got it onto Today, which is not quite a hard news program. The sgt. could well have said something like, "She did the case review right, the FBI played their role, our latent print examiner made the match, and that's how the team works." He didn't. The intern did good. Not amazing. Just good, as in didn't make a mistake by passing over the print evidence. Everyone else today did pretty much their job. They also didn't mention the only other person, the one whose efforts could have been deemed good work, even if nothing useful was found. That's the person who, 37 years ago, found and recovered the print, presumably from the scene. Of course, neither did they credit the movers and shakers who got first got AFIS going, nor did they credit Douglas Englebart. But the media didn't decide who got credit. That was the agency.

If you want to get lots of credit, become a department PIO. I had that duty for several years, and no matter what I said or who I credited in a case, people tended to assume that I worked all the cases, because I was the one who talked about them.

(Douglas Englebart? Oh, he invented the computer mouse the AFIS tech used to massage the image.)