Fingerprint Plan OKd for Tracing Criminals

The purchase of a $2.5-million computerized system for matching fingerprints, which authorities say will revolutionize identification of criminals and suspects, was approved Tuesday by county supervisors. It is expected to be in full operation at the Sheriff’s Department by early next year.

Sheriff’s Lt. John Tenwolde said the CAL-ID system “is the sort of space-age thing we dreamed about when I was a detective” and will allow San Diego law enforcement officers to match fingerprints of suspects with prints left at other crime scenes or to identify latent prints found at a crime scene with the culprit--all within hours rather the six to eight weeks it now takes to search state data banks for a match.

Richard Ramirez was allegedly tied to the scenes of several Southern California “Night Stalker” slayings through the CAL-ID system, and locally a suspect in a series of East County rapes was identified by the system, Tenwolde said. The local identification was made through a CAL-ID system computer lent to San Diego police last July.

The Sheriff’s Department plans to enter the fingerprints of everyone booked into County Jail into the computer system, he said, “and we are considering input of fingerprints of all the illegal aliens apprehended in this county” because of what police believe is a the high incidence of criminal activity by the non-citizens, he explained.

‘Put on the Heat’

“This system is really going to put the heat on criminals countywide and statewide,” Tenwolde said.

Supervisors authorized purchase of $2.5 million in computer hardware and software needed to link the county permanently to the state fingerprint storehouse and to allow local law enforcement officers to add local criminals’ prints to the network.

State and San Diego city funds will reimburse about $2.1 million of the purchase costs, leaving the county with a $472,000 expenditure for the equipment. Twenty-one additional law-enforcement personnel will be needed to operate the system when it is in full operation.

User Fee Required

Tenwolde said the CAL-ID system will be available to all law enforcement agencies in the county at an unspecified user fee, designed to provide full cost recovery for the services.

The CAL-ID system has been under discussion since 1985, and state matching funds equalling 70% of the cost of the local equipment would have been lost if the county and city had failed to act before a June 10 deadline.

Input terminals costing $200,000 each will be located at the Police Department and at the Sheriff’s Department, Tenwolde said. Eight booking terminals will be scattered at various county sites.

Tenwolde called the computerized identification system “truly amazing” and predicted that it will prevent criminals from evading prosecution on prior crimes by giving different names when they are booked and will dramatically increase the rate of crimes solved.