Arrest Halts Black Fingerprintings : Controversial Tactic Not Instrumental in Finding Rape Suspect

With the arrest of a serial-rape suspect, police in this depressed mill town outside Pittsburgh Friday halted the blanket fingerprinting of more than 700 black male residents--an unprecedented search that had been supported by many but denounced by others as unconstitutional and racist.

Chris Kelly, the imposing 33-year-old white police chief who comes across as both tough and thoughtful, apologized in nationally televised interviews for having “insulted” blacks who were asked to volunteer their fingerprints in a door-to-door canvass of the community of 5,000.

But the chief contended that the monthlong campaign had helped end nights of terror for the town’s large contingent of elderly women, many of whom live alone with newly acquired dogs, distress sirens, locks and guns.

Six Rape Victims

Since 1983, five white women over 64 and a 76-year-old black woman have been assaulted after having bed sheets thrown over their heads. The black suspect charged with the rapes, Dennis Foy, 22, reportedly has been linked to the case by fingerprints and other evidence.

Foy, who police said has confessed to the crimes, lived with a girlfriend two doors from the latest victim and grew up with his family three doors from the first, on a hillside overlooking the Monongahela River.

While canvassing the neighborhood last Sunday, Kelly took the fingerprints of the suspect’s father, a well-liked retired steelworker who promised to send his son down to the police station to be printed. But the young man was arrested Thursday when he allegedly tried to sell a rape victim’s property to an undercover detective.

Knelt and Prayed

Kelly said that, after being fingerprinted, Foy knelt, prayed and told officers: “You got me. It’s over.”

Amid the euphoric relief at the arrest, controversy--and mixed feelings--over the fingerprinting linger in a town that, until recently, at least, has had good race relations, even though whites predominate in government posts in the 40% black community.

“I don’t really like the fingerprinting,” a black man said Friday morning, standing across from police headquarters, where Kelly was welcomed by an applauding crowd Thursday night after announcing Foy’s arrest on ABC-TV’s “Nightline” program. “But the chief seemed to have his back against the wall, and there was no alternative.”

Although the local chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People backed the fingerprinting, an officer of the American Civil Liberties Union in Pittsburgh called it an “astounding” tactic that could only intimidate people into cooperating rather than face harassment.

Right to Privacy Cited

“You have a right to exercise your constitutional right to privacy and refuse to be fingerprinted, unless the police have a reasonable cause to believe a crime has been committed,” the ACLU’s Marion Damick said. Although the fingerprinting was ostensibly voluntary, she said, “you become an automatic suspect if you refuse to be printed.”

Damick contended that the fingerprinting canvass had been unnecessary because Foy’s arrest resulted from traditional police work: asking lots of questions during the canvass and setting up undercover buys.

In an interview shortly before Foy’s arrest, Kelly defended the fingerprinting as the last “desperate” resort for the 13 men on his force, many of whom were working overtime and days off without pay. He said that people were informed of their constitutional right to refuse to participate and that the fingerprints were destroyed after being checked.

Problem for Skeptics

Whether the prints would be retained in police files was a key point for many skeptics, worried about being tripped up by their prints in some future investigation.

Kelly denied assertions that the operation was racist--that, in the words of card store owner Ruth Gazsi, “the police would have never asked whites to be printed” if the rape suspect had been white.

“That’s ridiculous,” Kelly said. He was backed up by the town’s feisty mayor, Stephen Simko.

“There’s no use taking a white man’s fingerprints. We’re looking for a black rapist,” Simko said, speaking before Foy’s arrest.

But the police chief did confirm a key suspicion of critics: that police had intended to pursue those who refused to give their fingerprints.

“The ACLU told us it would be harassment if we go back to them,” Kelly said Thursday morning, “but we’d probably try that.”

125 Sets of Prints Taken

By the time Foy was arrested, police had obtained 125 sets of prints and been turned down by only five men. They had planned to seek prints from 700 to 900 men in all.

In curb-side interviews, many black men said they gave only grudging consent to the police requests.

“I don’t think it’s right, but why give police a hassle?” said Nathaniel Richardson, 20, while the hunt was continuing.

Despite the street grumblings, the town’s black leaders uniformly supported the fingerprinting, prompting the ACLU not to sue to stop it.

The Rev. Donald Turner of Second Baptist Church, who gave his prints, said: “It may be time to put aside some of our civil liberties temporarily.”

And Donald Purifoy, the town’s only black councilman, said the fingerprinting put him “on the spot” because of concerns that it would be coercive--but on balance, he thought, it was needed to catch a rapist causing unbearable fear.