Fifteen years ago, a detective investigating an attack on an elderly woman in Gisborne recalled the presence of an unidentified latent prints found on a woman who had faced a similar attack in 1979.
The two attacks were not inter-related, but when the officer fed the 1979 prints into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS), they matched the prints of a man who the Police arrested in 1992 on charges of possessing cannabis. He later pleaded guilty to the attack.
In 2006, David Mamea was jailed for a savage attack on a 14-year-old Auckland girl during a home invasion that had occurred two years earlier.
He was linked to the scene through a low quality, bloody partial palm print. The Police officials investigating the case said that without the assistance of AFIS, they would not have been able to identify and charge the culprit.
AFIS quietly marked its 20th birthday last month but there were many who acknowledged its usefulness in solving crime.
National Fingerprint Office Manager Eugene Wall said the system, introduced in 1991, had made a ‘huge difference to police work.’
He said prior to 1991, officers seeking a match for a prisoner’s prints, or a print from a crime scene, had to search through thousands of sets of prints kept on ink cards at the Police Headquarters in Wellington.
“It could be a very long job. In the investigation of a homicide in the 1970s, ten fingerprint officers spent a month searching the entire national collection for a match to a print but could not find any.
“AFIS can do the same search in less than a minute,” Mr Wall said with confidence. His team comprises six 10-print identification officers, a fingerprint officer and a supervisor.
He said prior to 1991, the entire national collection of prints was sent to AFIS developer NEC in Sacramento, California, for scanning and analysis.
“In order to reduce the task, a number of ‘low risk’ factors were eliminated. These included women born prior to 1960 and men born before 1955. But it still took nine months to identify and analyse,” he said.
According to Mr Wall, the system, installed on a computer at the Police Academy in Wellington was replaced with a newer model and in 2003 upgraded to include palm prints.
“Introduction of live scan technology in 2007 marked a major development. Scanning right from the hand became possible. Now, an officer processing a prisoner can get an almost instantaneous match back from the National Intelligence Application,” he said.
