New technology enhancing how fingerprints track local criminals

Tucked away inside the King County Courthouse is the Regional AFIS program, which stands for the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Fingerprints have been lifted from crime scenes -- and used to identify suspects -- since the late 1800s.

New technology has made it possible to identify and share those prints within minutes.

Recently, prints identified a man suspected of raping an elderly woman at an assisted living home in SeaTac, multiple suspects in a string of Auburn arsons, and the man convicted of raping a 12-year old girl in Shoreline.

“They did get DNA in that case, but the suspect never had DNA on file, so DNA wouldn’t have solved that case as quickly as fingerprints did,” AFIS Forensic Operations Manager Michele Triplett told KIRO 7 about the crime fighting method many thought would eventually die-out.

King County's AFIS data-base has more than 800,000 prints online.

Instead of having to visually compare prints, an examiner can run a print through AFIS for a much quicker, possibly nationwide match.

The prints of everyone booked into jail in King County are collected.

“That new booking gets run against the latent print database, so then we will develop potentially new leads on other cases,” Fingerprint Examiner Wade Anderson explained.  Because of the digital database, fingerprints “can just be sent on, electronically, to the state and the FBI.”

King County’s AFIS is regional, providing faster identifications for multiple police departments -- sometimes within minutes.

“If we have a name and the card on file, it could take 10 minutes,” Triplett said.

She’s been lifting prints for nearly than 30 years and said they’re often found in unusual places.

“People have a really hard time not touching cookie jars and refrigerators. They always want to see what’s inside those things, so we have a lot of success processing those items, and bathrooms as well.”

Identical twins have identical DNA but fingerprints are unique, and thanks to AFIS fingerprints helped solve a crime from the 1980s that still haunts program manager Carol Gillespie.

“A couple came into the office and wanted to see the computer and thank the computer for identifying the person who raped and killed their daughter,” she recalled. “It was very sad, very upsetting. But it also made me very proud of what we do.”

King County's AFIS program is funded by property taxes, costing the average homeowner about $20 a year.

Triplett said, it is possible to identify a fingerprint even when a suspect is wearing gloves.

Cox Media Group