CLPEX Chat Board

This is priceless!! Note to anyone who teaches processing - the first thing you should teach is the importance of filling out the lift cards as you lift the prints. If you're lifting prints in a class, maybe they should be labeled as 'test print'. I see this an error by the instructor (obviously the agency sent him to training hoping he'd learn all things that are important in processing).

Michele

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/09/13/30299.htm


Monday, September 13, 2010Last Update: 9:27 AM PT Judge Steers Clear of Texas Fingerprint Case
By LEIGH SANDERS
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(CN) - A federal judge in Dallas said state courts are better suited to rule on a lawsuit alleging the misuse of a Texas crime scene investigator's fingerprints.
U.S. District Judge Sidney Fitzwater refused to exercise jurisdiction over crime scene investigator Daniel Rhode's claim that Arlington, Texas, violated the Texas Tort Claims Act when, as part of a break-in investigation, one of its police officers submitted fingerprints that he had filched from Rhodes, his crime scene investigation teacher.
Rhodes taught a class in which students learned how to collect fingerprints. One of his students, Tibor Prince, "lifted Rhodes's fingerprints from a coffee bottle and mounted them on an index card," according to the ruling.
Prince then put the card in his fingerprint case.
He later mistakenly turned in Rhodes' fingerprints as part of a burglary investigation, the ruling states.
Arlington police had to investigate Rhodes for breaking into the apartment, though one officer allegedly "informed Rhodes that he did not believe that Rhodes had committed the burglary," according to the ruling.
Rhodes was placed on paid administrative leave during the investigation, which eventually cleared him of any wrongdoing.
He sued the city, Prince and four officers over the incident. The bulk of his claims and appeals were dismissed, leaving only his claim that the city had violated the Texas Tort Claims Act.
Judge Fitzwater declined to exercise his discretionary jurisdiction over the remaining claim, explaining that the case involved the sticky state-law question of "tangible personal property."
Questions of whether the fingerprint card was tangible personal property, which would mean the city had violated the Texas Tort Claims Act, and whether the fingerprints were "information contained on tangible personal property," which would mean the city could claim governmental immunity, were too "unsettled" for a federal court to decide, Fitzwater wrote.
Exercising jurisdiction would require him "to decide novel and complex issue of Texas law of a type that has confounded Texas courts," he concluded.
Fitzwater dismissed Rhodes' claim, but gave him the option to re-file.

There was a similar situation 10 years ago when live scan first came into widespread use in Florida. An individual doing "training" at a jail took his own prints and "dummied up" charges and other demographic data. It was pretty funny until he realized they were training on a "live" system and he now had a record for a pretty heinous crime.
Nothing more serious than embarrasment came of it and the word spread rather quickly that you shouldn't play around on a live AFIS database, training or otherwise.

I worked with Daniel Rhodes for many years. He has been doing in service training for a very long time and this had never occured before. Tibor Prince was in training and he should have never "saved" the lifts from training, then turned them in as evidence.
I was the AFIS operator who ran the latent prints and got the hit. After a long discussion with my partner and Prince's training officer I brought it before my supervisor. I believe that this case should have been handled in a diffirent manner.

This is why I am very careful about collecting any items or lift cards used during class that may contain my prints. Other examiners and even students laugh when I collect them or give them their prints back. I want to know where my prints are and who has control over them. You never know where they can end up.