Sunday, January 24, 2010

Choosing a Fingerprint Expert

As with any profession there are degree's of competence. Not every latent fingerprint examiner has equal skill sets, these are developed by full time commitment to latent fingerprint comparison work.
What you should look for in a latent fingerprint expert is their knowledge. Does the latent fingerprint expert understand the science behind the fingerprints , what training has the individual satisfactorily completed? Does the expert have the experience of training other fingerprint examiners especially in more advanced fingerprint training?
What is the examiners experience? Latent fingerprint examiners are often accepted as expert based on limited comparison experience. A latent fingerprint examiner should spend the majority of the day doing comparison work.
Is the expert a full time latent examiner? with today's limited budgets, many latent experts handle a multitude of duties and may not be as competent as you would expect from an expert.
Make no mistake, the comparisons being produced by the automated systems are producing many more challenging fingerprint comparisons. These more challenging comparisons come as training budgets and staffing in latent units are being cut back, a perfect storm for comparison errors.




Bob McAuley
Dir. Operations/Training
Forensic Biometric Identification Solutions LLC.

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