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Dear all, had to pass this on as I was having difficulty believeing what I was reading.
“Over the last 25 years, I personally only had a couple of cases where a print linked a suspect to the scene,” he said.Fingerprints rarely make case

Sorry..but I would expect my staff to match at least 150 case identifications a year!!! Not two in a career!!! If this is true how on earth does this person qualify for IAI certification? In UK we have to evidence through accreditation our casework to verify that we have conducted sufficient casework including idents and to a sufficent standard to warrant accreditation....this all sounds unbelievable to me??

Scary.

Cheers

Dave

By Donna Hales
Phoenix Staff Writer


Fingerprints used to be the most used item to link someone to a crime scene, but DNA is becoming more prevalent as a tool, said fingerprint expert Stan Florence.


An employee of the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, he’s been in the fingerprinting business for more than two decades.

“It’s very rare that we have a match,” he said.

One reason, he said, is that it’s difficult to pull prints — they almost always have to be on a small, clear surface.

“A more porous surface, possibly like a tire tool, it would be very rare to pull a legible print. And it has to be more than a partial print,” he said.

Florence has seen lots of prints where he could see ridge detail that wasn’t sufficient enough to make a match.

“Over the last 25 years, I personally only had a couple of cases where a print linked a suspect to the scene,” he said.

Today, DNA is used much more than fingerprints in solving crimes, he said.

“There is some research now that apparently is getting skin cells off a shell casing or sweat off a shirt that’s been discarded,” Florence said. “And eyewitness testimony is just as good as a fingerprint.

“Fingerprints are not always the key to solving a case, but something they can use. A lot of times I can pull a good print — a lot of times I can’t.”

Many times there is not enough oil in a person’s skin to leave a good print, he said.

Chemical enhancement helps in pulling a good print, he said. It’s better if the evidence can be taken to a lab where doing that is more readily available, he said.

If there is a print found on a beer can or something like a lamp, it’s good to take the item to the lab instead of trying to pull a print in the field, he said.

OSBI spokeswoman Jessica Brown said getting good fingerprints not only depends a lot on the surface, it takes skill.

“Many police departments don’t take near the number of fingerprints that an OSBI fingerprint expert will over the years,” she said.

Muskogee law enforcement officials say most local law enforcement agencies can’t afford the equipment or the experts to analyze fingerprints on their own.


Even if a computer says a fingerprint is a match, an expert has to verify what the computer says, Brown said.

To make comparisons of unknown latent prints to known fingerprints, a person has to be properly trained and either working for an agency that is accredited by the American Society of Crime Lab Director-Laboratory Accreditation Board (ASCLD/LAB), or the individual would need to be certified by the International Association for Identification (IAI), or be in the process of achieving individual IAI certification, said William Mahoney.

Mahoney, who has worked for the OSBI in the its Latent Evidence Unit for more than six years, said the OSBI is an accredited lab. He is an IAI certified examiner and has analyzed thousands of latent prints and has testified in courts all over Oklahoma.

In the state of Oklahoma, there are approximately seven individuals certified by the IAI (four of them at the OSBI and three at the Oklahoma City Police

Department).

There are currently less than 25 individuals in the state who work in an accredited lab and/or are certified, or in the process of being certified, Mahoney said.

He said the following agencies are ASCLD/LAB accredited: OSBI, Oklahoma City Police Department, Tulsa Police Department, Broken Arrow Police Department, Ardmore Police Department and the Questioned Documents Lab at the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office.

State law mandates that to render an opinion in court, a latent print analyst must be from an accredited lab, be IAI certified, or be in the process of being certified by the IAI.

Well, My hope is that the journalist (as the media usually does) got it all wrong or took something he said and misquoted him. Even more common, spoke to someone in the department that doesn't know the first thing about fingerprints and mixed the quotes. We have a Detective that frequently tells journalists, detectives and others that they have never had a case in which fingerprints made the case. He's wrong, yet he still says it. In my career in fingerprints me or people in our department have been interviewed and were appalled at what the "Journalist" reported we said.

On that note... if the story is correct, I'm concerned for them. This would not be an accurate reflection of forensic fingerprint identification in the US.

“There is some research now that apparently is getting skin cells off a shell casing or sweat off a shirt that’s been discarded,” Florence said. “And eyewitness testimony is just as good as a fingerprint."

That's the quote that makes me wonder what this guy is thinking.

I can't tell the basis for crediting him as a "fingerprint expert" (reporters like to say they interviewed an "expert" - makes the story sound credible), but Stan Florence is an OSBI Inspector, an investigator and was Grady County sheriff until he quit to take the OSBI job. So very likely not a full-time or lab-based examiner. OSBI is very much like the Texas Rangers and has a remarkably similar history. Their mission is primarily to assist local agencies when called in to help. That means they probably don't have that many burglary cases where prints can often figure prominently, or the ones with good prints are cleared up quickly and don't prompt a local to call them in. The forte of these sorts of agencies is tenacious, ground-covering, traditional investigation. They also may well be, like the Rangers, often called in after the scene has been worked by the local agency. And "rare" is a relative term. I wouldn't be surprised for a Grady County sheriff to view successful print cases as "rare." It's a smallish rural county, not the sort of place you find real aggressive forensics. (Current sheriff resigning after being charged, along with some other officers, with gambling offenses, and the undersheriff shot herself while cleaning her pistol.)

Here is another link to a similar article. I think after reading this one, it will make more sense.

http://www.individual.com/story.php?story=90723893