For every officer, every hour of every shift is a criminal investigation.
G. On June 19, 1892, two children were murdered on the outskirts of the town of Necochea on the coast of Argentina. This case is reported as the first murder solved by fingerprints thanks to the efforts of Juan Vucetich, a statistician employed by the Central Police Department in La Plata, Argentina. H. 1897 Edward Henry's assistant Azizul Haque comes up with a comprehensive system for classifying fingerprints, making practical their use without anthropometric measurements I. In the late 1800s a controversy broke out between William Herschel and Henry Faulds who both claimed to have discovered fingerprint identification as a means of identifying criminals. In 1892, Galton published the first definitive book on dactylography, Finger Prints. It presented statistical proof of the uniqueness of fingerprints and outlined many principles of identification by fingerprints. In addition to ridge patterns, there are minute variations and irregularities in the ridges themselves. These are called RIDGE CHARACTERISTICS. Examples of ridge characteristics are RIDGE DOTS, BIFURCATIONS, SHORT RIDGES, RIDGE ENDS and CROSSINGS. Each print has its own unique combination of overall pattern and special ridge characteristics. No two prints have ever been found that were exactly alike . Even those of identical twins are different. Prints remain the same throughout life.
K. Faurot and"James Jones" In 1904, New York City Detective Sergeant Joseph Faurot solved several hotel thefts by correctly identifying a suspect who claimed to be James Jones. Fingerprints correctly identified Jones as a thug with many prior convictions by the name of Daniel Nolan. L. The West Case In 1903 a fingerprint comparison of two Levenworth Penitentiary prisoners revealed that Will West and William West were two different individuals. This was despite the fact the two inmates had identical appearances and nearly identical Bertillon measurements. This showed the superiority of fingerprints to anthropometry as a system of identification.
M. 1905 saw the use of fingerprints for the U.S. Army. Two years later the U.S. Navy started, and was joined the next year by the Marine Corp. During the next 25 years more and more law enforcement agencies join in the use of fingerprints as a means of personal identification. Many of these agencies began sending copies of their fingerprint cards to the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was established by the International Association of Police Chiefs. It was in 1918 when Edmond Locard wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification. This is where the often quoted (12 points) originated. Be aware though, there is "NO" required number of points necessary for an identification. Some countries have set their own standards which do include a minimum number of points, but not in the United States. In 1924, an act of congress established the Identification Division of the F.B.I.. The National Bureau and Leavenworth consolidated to form the nucleus of the F.B.I. fingerprint files. By 1946, the F.B.I. had processed 100 million fingerprint cards in manually maintained files; and by 1971, 200 million cards.
1905 saw the use of fingerprints for the U.S. Army. Two years later the U.S. Navy started, and was joined the next year by the Marine Corp. During the next 25 years more and more law enforcement agencies join in the use of fingerprints as a means of personal identification. Many of these agencies began sending copies of their fingerprint cards to the National Bureau of Criminal Identification, which was established by the International Association of Police Chiefs. It was in 1918 when Edmond Locard wrote that if 12 points (Galton's Details) were the same between two fingerprints, it would suffice as a positive identification. This is where the often quoted (12 points) originated. Be aware though, there is "NO" required number of points necessary for an identification. Some countries have set their own standards which do include a minimum number of points, but not in the United States.
By 1999, the FBI had planned to stop using paper fingerprint cards (at least for the newly arriving civil fingerprints) inside their new Integrated AFIS (IAFIS) site at Clarksburg, WV. IAFIS will initially have individual computerized fingerprint records for approximately 33 million criminals. Old paper fingerprint cards for the civil files are still manually maintained in a warehouse facility (rented shopping center space) in Fairmont, WV. Since the Gulf War, most military fingerprint enlistment cards received have been filed only alphabetically by name. The FBI hopes to someday classify and file these cards so they can be of value for unknown casualty (or amnesiac) identification (when no passenger/victim list from a flight, etc., is known). The characteristics of a fingerprints, ridges, etc are called minutiae. The distance between minutiae points is calculated and converted into a numerical value.
C. All firearms, except shotguns have rifling in their barrels. Rifling is the process of drilling out the barrel used by each manufacture. This rifling creates grooves called lands, the distance between these is measured in hundredths of an inch or millimeters. The distance between the lands determines the caliber, therefore a .38 caliber revolver has lands that are .38 hundreds of an inch apart. Other components of the bullet, like the twist can tell the investigator the manufacturer, model and caliber of a weapon. D. Striations tell the investigator the individual characteristics of a firearm. These are small marks on the sides of a bullet which are made by passing through the barrel. These marks are caused by imperfections and differences made on the barrel during the rifling process. No two striations are the same.
IV. Firearms Identification A. 1835 Henry Goddar, a Bow Street Runner, made the first successful attempt to identify a murderer from a bullet recovered from the body of a victim. B. Firearms identification includes identification of the types of ammunition, designing firearms, restoring obliterated serial numbers on weapons, estimating the distance between the firearms muzzle and the victim.