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A DAY IN THE LIFE OF
FINGERPRINT SCIENCES GROUP The oldest forensic crime-solving method in history is still the most commonly used to identify persons of interest in police investigations, accounting for almost 11,000 fingerprint identifications in Victoria during the last financial year. Not only are fingerprints the leading source of forensic identifications, but they are also the fastest.
New prints can be from a variety of sources, including those taken from people in police custody and for civil purposes such as visa applications.
Ongoing improvements to fingerprint examination and processes at Victoria Police’s Forensic Services Department means turnaround times for results are continuously improving.
“The national fingerprint database has the capability to continuously compare unsolved crime scene fingerprints on record with new known reference samples added to the collection,” Ms Lynch said.
“Fingerprints are one of the quickest and most reliable sources of forensic evidence used in criminal and coronial investigations,” fingerprint expert Danielle Lynch said.
This sometimes provides welcome results on unsolved and cold case investigations, and the identification of serial rapist and murderer Raymond Edmunds is a Victorian success.
And it is faster turnaround times for fingerprint results that give Victoria Police a head start on identifying and arresting possible offenders of high volume and major crimes – the quicker investigators receive the information, the sooner they can make arrests and interrupt recidivist offending.
His fingerprints were taken in NSW in 1985 and linked him to a number of serious and violent Victorian crimes committed from the 1960s to the 1980s.
Earlier this year, police in Geelong were investigating a series of home burglaries and vehicle thefts across multiple suburbs in the area. The local Fingerprint Sciences Group (FSG) was tasked with analysing the fingerprints left behind at the crime scenes and quickly linked them all to one offender. With collaboration between the Crime Scene Services Unit, an analyst and the Crime Investigation Unit, the owner of the prints was identified as a previously unknown offender. The man’s prints were linked to more than 20 crime scenes, giving police enough evidence to lay charges and stop further crimes from taking place. Victoria Police took more than 70,000 sets of fingerprints in the 2017-18 financial year that were added to the national fingerprint database, where the prints of more than five million individuals are stored. 24
POLICE LIFE | SPRING 2018
But it is not an easy process to recover, analyse and match fingerprints. Becoming an expert in the field takes four to five years of on-the-job training and theory, learning photography, chemical development techniques, biology of skin and foetal development and giving opinion evidence in court. Fingerprint expert Craig Hamilton has 21 years of experience behind him. He is the team leader of the Operations Unit, responsible for examining major crime scenes and evidence recovery. “It takes a long time to develop the knowledge required to examine items for latent prints,” he said. “Our job is to get what’s not visible, examine it and make it visible.” This is done using a variety of light sources, imaging devices and chemical development techniques to examine different items.