What happens to the latent prints after the officers recover them from crime scenes?
The latent print cards are submitted to the evidence property room at the Lincoln St. station. The latent print cards are gathered then transported to the department’s fingerprint examiner. The examiner closely examines each print card to determine their worth as evidence. There are four levels of quality. The first is sufficient quality for a Cal-Id automated fingerprint identification search (AFIS), which means the print can be entered in a computer database and compared to a possible suspect automatically. The response time varies depending on the priority of the case. Usually, homicides, rapes and other crimes of violence take priority. It may take six weeks or more to get a response for a property related theft case. The second is sufficient quality for a known comparison, which means the print can be compared to a known suspect but not good enough for an automated search. The third is sufficient quality palm print, which means the latent print is part of a palm print. Currently,
