Weekly Fingerprint Checkup

I remember I was watching that TV show Homicide like a few years ago when they were running the whole series over again and there was this one episode about this murdered kid, and this obsessed detective.

At the scene, all they got in the way of physical evidence was one fingerprint that they knew belonged to the doer, but he wasn't in the databases. Then the case goes cold. But what this one detective does is run the print through the system every week for years. Then one day it brings back a hit. The guy's just been picked up for something else, and they've got their killer.

My question is, does a detective have to still do that sort of thing? Isn't all this automated now? Can you set it up so your guilty print is run through the system every monday, the way your antivirus program checks for updates every time you boot up? I mean, it's not as dramatically obsessive as having to do it every week for years, but an weekly automated run through the system probably results in more bad guys behind bars.

Thanks.

Be nice if things worked like that, but most departments don't have enough loose change for the expense of such a system.

In MN we have the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

I'm sure larger dept's have something that can scan fingerprints in AFIS or something like that, but as cona said, most (almost all) departments don't have money for anything even close to that technology.

Soo....to answer your question, I have no idea.

I don't know about anywhere else, but here when a latent is entered into the state database it is automatically compared to newly entered prints.

Welcome MO Troop. I am just across the bridge from ya.