LAPD Gets Funds to Upgrade Fingerprinting

The City Council approved the replacement of the LAPD’s computerized fingerprint information system Tuesday while ordering the Police Department to explain why thousands of criminal fingerprints have not been put into the current system.

The City Council voted to spend $190,000 for new computer lines connecting police as they look for information using fingerprints of suspects and convicted criminals. The money will come out of a law enforcement block grant, not out of the city’s general fund.

“The computer system we have in place now is 12 years old,” said Laura Johnson, chief management analyst for the LAPD. “It’s antiquated, and it’s no longer useful compared to what’s available these days.” Johnson also noted the current system is not Y2K compliant.

The creation of the fingerprint information system is a precursor to a collaborative effort between the LAPD and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department that would allow joint communication on fingerprint identification. Johnson said the county will be responsible for most of the cost, spending $8 million to $10 million in state funds on the new system’s hardware.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, City Councilman Hal Bernson was adamant that the LAPD answer why roughly 7,000 fingerprints have yet to be filed into the current system. He said many of the fingerprints are those of violent offenders such as rapists and murderers.

The City Council voted for an amendment Tuesday that calls for the LAPD to present council members with a report on the problem in one month.

After the council meeting, Johnson explained that the backlogged cases were primarily made up of prints taken from crime scenes. She said the likely reason for delays in inputting the fingerprint information was because such prints require a significant amount of time to gather, piece together and match.