Fingerprint Project Touches Off Controversy

To viewers of television police shows, a brewing controversy over a $22-million statewide fingerprint system must appear to be much ado about nothing.

Long before the Hill Street precinct got the blues or Starsky met Hutch, television detectives like Joe Friday and Boston Blackie were using fingerprints to track down bad guys.

In real life, however, it has taken luck and some very specific leads to match even the best fingerprint with one of the 5 million that state law enforcement authorities keep in their files.

But a recent technological breakthrough is changing that. California is preparing to make a multimillion-dollar investment in state-of-the-art computer equipment that will allow real cops to do what their TV counterparts have been doing for years.

New Technology

And the Anaheim subsidiary of British-owned Delarue Printrak is in a last-minute battle to wrest the contract for the central data base to the state Justice Department from Japanese-owned NEC Information Systems.

At stake, Printrak’s representatives say, are thousands of potential jobs, many in Orange County.

The technology, which involves highly sophisticated optical discs, is so new that it has become a key issue in Delarue Printrak’s arguments that the bidding process, which ended last December, was unfair and improper.

Instead of submitting a final bid by the September deadline, Delarue Printrak wrote to the Justice Department contending that no one in the business--neither they nor any of their handful of competitors worldwide--could meet the requirement to show that the equipment had been in operation for at least six months.

Rival NEC acknowledged that its fingerprint tracking systems for the City of San Francisco and the State of Alaska, systems similar to the one California will install, had not been in operation long enough. NEC maintained, however, that identical computer equipment had been in operation since February, 1984, at an earthquake prediction laboratory at Hokkaido University in Japan.

Claims Disputed

Delarue Printrak disputes NEC’s claims, but state officials who accepted the bid were satisfied that NEC had met the requirement.

Printrak has hired George Zenovich, a former Democratic state senator from Fresno who is now a partner in a Sacramento lobbying firm with Dennis Carpenter, Orange County government’s advocate here.

Last Friday, at Zenovich’s urging, state Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacidenda Heights) persuaded senators to refer the $2.9-million 1985 appropriation for the fingerprint system to the Assembly-Senate budget conference committee for review.

The move angered Justice Department officials and some senators who had already reviewed the bidding process--and a number of other accusations by Delarue Printrak--as the draft state budget moved through legislative committees and subcommittees.

“We’ve already had extensive hearings on this issue,” said Brian Taugher, special assistant to state Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp.

Although NEC had no competition when final bids were opened, Taugher said the state Justice and General Services departments followed bidding rules to the letter in the two-year-long process. Both Assembly and Senate budget subcommittees thoroughly reviewed the proceedings, and the auditor general has taken a cursory look at them in response to Delarue Printrak’s protests, Taugher added.

Matter Sent to Panel

But last Friday, Campbell convinced the majority of senators that, as his chief of staff Jerry Haleva put it, “nothing can be harmed by additional scrutiny in the conference committee.”

State analysts say the contract will be worth at least $22.5 million over the next few years, and it could be worth as much $40 million if the Legislature passes a bill that would put remote computer terminals in police stations around the state.

Haleva said Campbell also was concerned about the potential for jobs in his district.

The conference panel is likely to take up the issue late this week or early next. Besides the claims regarding the fairness of the bidding, the economy-minded lawmakers will hear Printrak’s estimate that it can do the job for around $14 million--less than the state’s $18-million original estimate and well below the $22.5 million NEC got approved.

Work Begun

Taugher said there could be problems if the review results in the state changing its plans. For one thing, he said, NEC could sue the state. According to a Senate subcommittee analysis, NEC already has leased 14,000 square feet of space, installed $5 million worth of equipment and hired more than 100 people.

But even more important, Taugher said, a delay would mean that thousands of crimes would go unsolved.

State law enforcement officials estimate they will solve 22,500 more crimes a year by having the ability, for the first time, to match fingerprints at crime scenes with those on file in a matter of hours.

Proposed Bill Could Mean Windfall for Road Projects

A year ago, Orange County transportation officials were saying their only hope for solving a myriad of problems was voter passage of Proposition A, a penny-a-dollar sales tax increase for street, highway and transit projects.

The county’s anti-tax voters, however, resoundingly rejected that notion.

Now, those transportation officials have greatly scaled back their dreams and turned to the Legislature for help.

This week or next, the Senate is likely to pass a bill by Sen. John Seymour (R-Anaheim) that will allow the interest on approximately $85 million saved for future rapid transit development to be spent on streets and highways. The Senate Transportation Commission approved the measure 9-0 last week.

The $9-million annual gain for road projects means a $9-million annual loss for county transit officials, who had envisioned a 38-mile light rail system through central Orange County before the Proposition A vote.

OCTD Supports Bill

But the Orange County Transit District supports the bill. Both Orange County Supervisor Ralph Clark and Santa Ana Councilman Dan Griset, who came up with the idea, are on the OCTD board.

The money generated under Seymour’s bill, however, pales by comparison to the $5 billion the sales tax was expected to raise over 15 years.

But that amount is nothing to sneeze at, county officials say.

Stan Oftelie, executive director of the Orange County Transportation Commission, noted that Seymour’s bill would create “the largest local street and road fund in Orange County.”

‘It’s a Step’

“It’s not great, but it’s a step,” Oftelie said.

Three other bills related to Orange County’s transportation funds also are making advances. The Assembly and Senate last week passed identical bills to allow Orange County and its cities to make changes in the development fee program, which is intended to finance major planned roads or highways in three planned transportation corridors.

Another bill, by Assemblyman Nolan Frizzelle (R-Huntington Beach), would authorize toll authorities to help pay for at least two of those proposed highways. The toll roads bill has been approved by the Assembly Transportation Commission and is pending before the Ways and Means Ways and Means budget-writing panel.

County transportation officials have said they like the idea, but so far they have remained officially neutral on the bill.

Oftelie said 10 cities and the county may ask Frizzelle to amend his bill so that they could form a toll authority to build and operate the roads. The bill, as written, would let private firms, which would be governed as a utility, build and operate the toll roads.