Digital Digit Prints

The “crime scene” looked like a Hollywood set. Spilled wine across the table. Scattered playing cards and poker chips. A bloody knife, an overturned chair and nearly 300 law enforcement members milling around the outline of a body.

The officers were all part of a conference on high-tech crime-fighting tools held last week at the Doubletree Hotel in Orange.

“I wish all murders were this easy to solve,” joked one police officer.

They might be, thanks to a slew of new digital tools. Checking a suspect’s background takes only a few minutes--if the department uses a database that matches fingerprints with faces.

Gone are the fingerprint cards and ink, as are the dusty books filled with mug shots.

Now officers use digital booking systems, where fingerprints are scanned into a computerized system and checked against prints stored in a department’s database. Digital mug shots erase the need for cameras, and officers can link multiple images--charting different ages and general appearances--with a single set of fingerprints.

“The idea is to make everything, from dispatch to booking, accessible to the officer,” said Steve Yeich, a spokesman for Printrak International Inc. of Anaheim, which held the event and promoted its latest line of automated tools.

“If we can make the process faster and more efficient, that means less people will slip through the system,” he said.

Printrak is one of the leading suppliers of the electronic fingerprint identification systems increasingly used by law enforcement agencies. The firm has contracts with 600 clients worldwide, a boost due in part to several recent acquisitions.

The Anaheim Police Department signed a seven-year contract with Printrak last month, agreeing to lease an automated fingerprinting system from the company for about $400,000 a year.

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P.J. Huffstutter covers high technology for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7830 and at p.j.huffstutter@latimes.com