Owensboro Police Department Announces New Fingerprinting System
The Owensboro Police Department is home to a brand new fingerprinting system. And that system is synced with the FBI's database as well as the Commonwealth of Kentucky's.
The Owensboro Police Department's brand new computer system (pictured above) is allows locally-obtained fingerprint evidence to be electronically transmitted to two key databases: 1) the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification
System (IAFIS) 2) the Kentucky Automated Fingerprint Identification
System (AFIS).
The new system is called the MorphoTrak Automated Fingerprint Identification
System. It is state-of-the-art and allows OPD to continue to instantly upload and share fingerprint evidence. The department was able to secure the MorphoTrak system thanks to a grant of $76,986.00 from the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security.
For some perspective on how useful and important this new tool will be . . . the Owensboro Police Department is one of approximately 100 agencies in the
United States that has fingerprint examiners on staff. According the to OPD officials, "electronically submitting fingerprints for analysis through AFIS, our print examiner can then conduct a print comparison between those we submit and the possible matches
generated by the Federal and State AFIS systems."
The current FBI system will suspend operations of its current system (Direct Latent Connectivity) at the end of June. And, without MorphoTrak in place, fingerprint evidence obtained by OPD would have to be mailed to the Kentucky State Police lab for analysis and in turn, mailed back to OPD. This new equipment greatly reduces the time spent in uploading and sharing this data and evidence.