Fingerprints as Crime-Fighters

At thousands of crime scenes in Los Angeles, fingerprints are taken but few lead detectives to suspected killers, rapists or thieves because of the monumental task of comparing them against the millions of fingerprint cards on file.

The task is easier in Orange County because the Sheriff’s Department uses a computer to compare new prints with fingerprint cards of 13,000 known suspects, selected from the department’s files of 600,000 cards. Authorities there have used the computer to identify 26 suspects and clear 100 cases since October.

The numbers are even more dramatic in San Francisco, where police use a system with a much larger computerized library of prints. Since March, San Francisco police have identified 1,400 suspects, including those in 52 unsolved murders.

A computer search takes minutes to produce potential matchups while a manual search of the same files could take years, according to specialists at the state Department of Justice who are familiar with fingerprint-tracking systems.

There is no special computer available to Los Angeles, although both the county Sheriff’s Deparment and the city Police Department covet the new technology.

A system tailored for the Los Angeles Police Department would cost $6 million and could be purchased in 10 installments. The budget could absorb such a relatively modest cost, but competition for public-safety dollars is keen. And a fingerprint computer system is seventh on the Police Department’s priority list--well behind requests for money to pay for additional police officers and new squad cars.

The San Francisco Police Department paid $2.6 million out of its general fund last year, after voters approved a ballot initiative that directed the purchase.

There is another potential method of paying for access to such a system. Sen. John F. Foran (D-San Francisco) is sponsoring SB 190, which would have the state pay 70% of the costs of regional systems--with one each in Orange, San Diego and Los Angeles counties. Even if the Foran bill passes, the system could not be installed until 1988 at the earliest, and competition among departments might limit its use to major felony cases.

Los Angeles needs its own system, programmed for a broad variety of cases--including burglaries and car thefts and to see through aliases under which criminals who are rearrested often slip unnoticed through the system. Orange County could use help from the state in expanding its fingerprint data base.

Because voters have twice rejected special taxes to boost the Los Angeles police budget, larger numbers of uniformed officers, more police cars and other improvements in the department must come from the money on hand. And the value of a super-sleuthing computer must be weighed against the value of other programs. But the experiences in San Francisco and Orange County suggest that the Los Angeles department should take another look at its priorities and see whether the fingerprint-tracking system should be higher on the list. If the system lives up to its reputation, it can make crime a riskier business and Los Angeles a safer place.