There’s a new tool in town for fighting crime.
And some law enforcement agencies are wondering how they made do for so long without the RapidID, a fingerprint scanner about the size of a smart phone.
“It’s instantaneous information,” said Sgt. Lamar Hester with the Atlanta Police Department.
The RapidID units are used to take fingerprints, mostly in the field.
“It’s revolutionizing the way we do business,” said Vernon Keenan, director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which led the pilot project testing the “mobile biometric fingerprint identification” units.
In addition to Atlanta police and the GBI, several other metro law-enforcement agencies use the devices, including Cobb and Gwinnett counties.
Is the technology too Big Brother like? The Georgia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has had no complaints about threats to privacy so far.
"Our only concern will be what they are doing with the fingerprints they are collecting," said Chara Fisher Jackson, legal director for the Georgia ACLU.
But ACLU chapters in other states have voiced concerns about the scanners.
The North Carolina chapter, for example, had concerns the devices helped create a government database of fingerprints of those not charged with a crime.
But when that concern was raised in North Carolina, the director of City-County Bureau of Identification in Wake County, N.C., said the scanners do not capture and retain the fingerprints; they only access databases that contain the fingerprints of those arrested.
Also, some people can refuse to place their two fingers on the screen of the scanner, Keenan said. An officer can require fingerprints only if he already has decided to make an arrest, according to the GBI. The GBI told the local law enforcement agencies they need to develop their own policies.
The state got 120 devices that were distributed to two dozen metro Atlanta law enforcement agencies.
For the most part, officers share them.
"We would like to see every officer have one," said Sgt. John Neal with the Gwinnett County Sheriff's Office.
A federal grant for more than $1.2 million was recently approved to add 57 agencies statewide to the program, Keenan said. The cost for the devices plus the necessary software varies from $2,000 to $2,800 each, according to the GBI.
The system searches for outstanding warrants, missing persons reports and protective orders. It also checks the Secret Service’s protective, parole, probation and identity theft files, electronic records for sex offenders, immigration violators, foreign fugitives, and known and suspected terrorists.
There will be no fingerprint records for those who have never been charged with a crime.
The scanners also are used to confirm identities, but that works only if the fingerprints are already in the state and national databases because the people were charged with crimes.
According to GBI records, law enforcement agencies in Cobb and Gwinnett counties used the system far more and had 70 percent of all "hits," or fingerprint matches, last year. Combined, the Cobb County Police Department and the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office used the system almost 3,000 times last year during the six-month program, and 2,070 were hits. Gwinnett County Sheriff’s Office and police and the Lawrenceville Police Department accounted for 2,700 hits out of almost 5,580 checks.
Regionwide, there were 6,887 hits out of 13,589 checks.
Hester offered several examples of wanted criminals who apparently thought a lie would save them from arrest, at least temporarily.
There was the probationer who offered up his brother’s name and other personal information.
Another was a man wanted on drug charges who was caught up in a sweep. An APD officer not involved with the sweep had stopped the man moments earlier under suspicion he had committed a burglary. The man, Hester said, gave a fake name, and that worked until his fingerprints were checked and it was learned he was wanted by another law enforcement agency.
"It would be so easy to lie to the law enforcement officer wanting a name,” Hester said.
And “there are some excellent fraudulent documents out there,” Keenan said.
While most agencies use the devices in the field, the Gwinnett Sheriff's Office has found it helpful to use at least two of them to check inmates as they come into the jail.
It saves time because police officers don't have to be called back to change paperwork when it's discovered that the inmate gave a false name, according to Col. Donald Bartlett.
Neal said the Gwinnett Sheriff’s Office uses the RapidID units primarily when serving warrants, at road checkpoints and during sweeps.
“There have been several cases where someone has actually lied about their name or date of birth, and it comes back with their picture and that they’re wanted,” Neal said. “We had one where it saved a female from going to jail.”
In that case, she was who she said she was, and not her twin sister, Neal said.
“She was being truthful about who she was,” Neal said.
The two devices in the field in Gwinnett are shared by 15 deputies who serve warrants, and the rest are at the jail. Neal said the agency hopes to get six more for field operations.
“It’s a useful tool and it will be helpful when we get more of them,” Neal said.
2.Is ‘RapidID' the branded name of the device? With no space between words?
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