Page 51 - Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems (AFIS)

36 AUTOMATED FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION SYSTEMS

Table 2.2
AFIS Timetable: Initial Year Event
Automation
1967 National Crime Information Center is established.
1973 IAI adopts position eliminating minimum number of ridge characteristics.
1977 RCMP implements AFIS.
1977 IAI establishes Latent Print Certification Program.
1983 Interstate Identification Index (III) is added to NCIC.
1984 San Francisco Police Department implements AFIS.
1986 Pierce County Sheriff’s Department and Tacoma police department (WA) AFIS
installed.
1989 New York State implements statewide latent print searching.
1991 IAFIS funding begins.
1992 FBI has 32 million sets of fingerprint cards in the master repository.
1993 ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993 American National Standard for Information Systems—
Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint Information.
1994 ANSI/NIST-CSL 1-1993 American National Standard for Information Systems—
Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint Information, UK.
1995 IAFIS begins communications with Boston Police Department.

identify the pattern classification rather quickly, time was required to retrieve
a card from the fingerprint file, compare it to the submitted images, and then
return it back to the file.
See Table 2.2 for a list of events that occurred during the period of initial
automation.

2.4 LATENT PRINT PROCESSING
Identification bureaus also recognized that within their files was a great
untapped resource: the use of tenprint records in searches of latent prints,
those finger images that remain on a surface after it has been touched. Prior
to AFIS technology, latent print identification depended to a large degree on
suspect and elimination prints. If a latent print was found at a crime scene, it
would be lifted and compared with the prints of those who had a legitimate
right to be at the crime scene, e.g., office staff at an office that had been bur-
glarized and police officers working at the crime scene. However, there was no
feasible method for searching every latent print found.
The latent print examination process became more uniform beginning in
1973, when the International Association for Identification (IAI) rejected the
position that a minimum number of ridges characteristics or “points” that must
be present in latent prints for an identification. Other characteristics, such as
minutiae, ridge flow, and dots, can provide sufficient detail for a latent exam-
iner to make a positive identification, not make an identification, or conclude
that there is not enough information to make a decision. The IAI followed this