Question

Explain how the latest technology is used in the investigations of fingerprints, DNA, and firearms?

Answer 1

ADVANCED FINGERPRINT IDENTIFICATION TECHNOLOGY:-

In 2011, the FBI launched its Advance Fingerprint Identification Technology (AFIT) system which enhanced fingerprint and latent print processing services. The system increased the accuracy and daily processing capacity of the agency and also improved the system's availability.

The AFIT system implemented a new fingerprint matching algorithm which increased the accuracy of fingerprint matching from 92% to more than 99.6%, according to the FBI. During the first five days of operation, AFIT matched more than 900 fingerprints that were not matched using the old system.

With AFIT on board, the agency has been able to reduce the number of required manual fingerprint reviews by 90%.

Prints From Metal Objects

In 2008, scientists at the University of Leicester in Great Britain developed a technique that will enhance fingerprints on metal objects from small shell casings to large machine guns.

They found that chemical deposits that form fingerprints have electrical insulating characteristics, which can block electric current even if the fingerprint material is very thin, only nanometers thick.

By using electric currents to deposit a colored electro-active film which shows up in the bare regions between the fingerprint deposits, researchers can create a negative image of the print in what is known as an electrochromic image.

According to the Leicester forensic scientists, this method is so sensitive it can even detect fingerprints from metal objects even if they have been wiped off or even washed off with soapy water.

Color-Changing Florescent Film

Since 2008, Professor Robert Hillman and his Leicester associates have further enhanced their process by adding fluorophore molecules to the film which is sensitive to light and ultra-violet rays.

Basically, the fluorescent film gives scientist and extra tool in developing contrasting colors of latent fingerprints - electrochromic and fluorescence. The fluorescent film provides a third color that can be adjusted to develop a high-contrast fingerprint image.

Micro-X-Ray Florescence

The development of the Leicester process followed a 2005 discovery by University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory using micro-X-ray fluorescence, or MXRF, to develop fingerprint imaging.

MXRF detects the sodium, potassium and chlorine elements present in salts, as well as many other elements if they are present in the fingerprints. The elements are detected as a function of their location on a surface, making it possible to "see" a fingerprint where the salts have been deposited in the patterns of fingerprints, the lines called friction ridges by forensic scientists.

MXRF actually detects the sodium, potassium and chlorine elements present in those salts, as well as many other elements, if they are present in the fingerprints. The elements are detected as a function of their location on a surface, making it possible to "see" a fingerprint where the salts have been deposited in the patterns of fingerprints, the lines called friction ridges by forensic scientists.

Noninvasive Procedure

The technique has several advantages over traditional fingerprint detection methods that involve treating the suspect area with powders, liquids, or vapors in order to add color to the fingerprint so that it can be easily seen and photographed.

Using traditional fingerprint contrast enhancement, it is sometimes difficult to detect fingerprints present on certain substances, such as multicolored backgrounds, fibrous papers and textiles, wood, leather, plastic, adhesives and human skin.

The MXRF technique eliminates that problem and is noninvasive, meaning a fingerprint analyzed by the method is left pristine for examination by other methods like DNA extraction.

Los Alamos scientist Christopher Worley said MXRF is not a panacea for detecting all fingerprints since some fingerprints will not contain enough detectable elements to be "seen". However, it is envisioned as a viable companion to the use of traditional contrast enhancement techniques at crime scenes, since it does not require any chemical treatment steps, which are not only time consuming but can permanently alter the evidence.

ROLE OF DNA:-

DNA profiling and matching of physical data, such as fingerprints, are used in solving all crime types ranging from housebreaking and car crime to assaults, murder and rape. The forensic scientists will look for suitable samples at a crime scene, examining such items as weapons, clothing, hair or anything else from which they can obtain body cells for DNA profiling, or fingerprints or "marks" for use in fingerprint matching.

The Scottish DNA database can help to solve undetected cases where there is no suspect. DNA profiling can also be used to identify a body formally. This is achieved by obtaining DNA profiles from both the mother and father or by relating personal effects to a body. DNA profiling is used in such cases after all other means of identifying a body have been carried out.

The details of a person's fingerprints are distinctive to them and only them. Even identical twins do not have identical fingerprints. A fingerprint can be left on many types of surfaces - a glass, a door, or a murder weapon for example. It can be made visible by brushing it with a powder or treating it with chemicals in a lab. Similarly, if the fingers are coated with ink or another substance such as paint, oil or blood, than a permanent impression may be left on a particular item.

Unknown fingerprints, or "marks" from a crime scene are compared by a fingerprint expert against known prints. The fingerprint expert will weigh up all of the information available and determine whether there is unique agreement between an unknown print and a known one which would confirm identity beyond all reasonable doubt.

The most crucial aspect of the fingerprint identification process is the verification element. This is an independent and complete analysis, comparison and evaluation of both prints which is carried out by a minimum of two fingerprint experts. The verification process is the key to the reliability of fingerprint evidence. Consistent results from different experts ensure the reliability of fingerprint evidence.

LATEST TECHNOLOGY IN FIREARMS:-

A technology that advocates say can help solve and prevent future gun crimes has met stiff resistance in California, and some say the political impasse could be costing lives and allowing solvable cases to go cold.

The technology is called the National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN). Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which oversees NIBIN, have recently been pushing local and state law enforcement agencies to adopt the technology. ATF officials from Washington, D.C., to the San Francisco Bay Area have pointed to NIBIN’s ability to connect shootings across city, county and state lines, some of which originally appeared unrelated.

Most law enforcement agencies in California’s urban centers use the technology, but NBC Bay Area’s Investigative Unit found major gaps in California’s ballistics evidence network, most notably across the 10 state-run crime labs operated by the California Department of Justice.

For NIBIN to work effectively, law enforcement agencies must have access to large amounts of ballistics data. It requires technicians to perform ballistics testing on every shell casing, bullet, and gun recovered at every crime scene, and enter those ballistic images into NIBIN. As images of shell casings are entered into the database, the system searches for matches of shell casings left behind at other crime scenes. That allows law enforcement to connect different shootings to the same firearm and generate investigative leads for detectives before cases go cold. ATF officials say by proactively using the database, police can prevent future gun crimes by taking known shooters off the street.

However, NIBIN technology is only as effective as the number of crime labs and police departments that participate, and experts tell NBC Bay Area that those large gaps in California dilute the entire network.

There was an attempt to fix just that problem in California’s Legislature in 2018.

A bill authored by California Assemblyman Evan Low would have closed those gaps by mandating all guns and shell casings recovered at California crime scenes to be entered into NIBIN. But the bill never made it out of the Appropriations Committee. Multiple law enforcement sources in both local and state law enforcement agencies told NBC Bay Area the bill faced stiff resistance from California’s Attorney General’s Office and some local law enforcement agencies. Among the reasons cited for opposition: cost, competing technology already on the market, and a resistance to any mandates on how local and state agencies run their crime labs.

Behind the Scenes: ATF's National Laboratory Center

Get a behind the scenes tour of ATF's National Laboratory Center in Ammendale, Maryland, where agents conduct NIBIN testing, training and data input.

“We in the State of California are allowing crimes to go unsolved unnecessarily,” Low said. “We have the information and the systems in place to be able to do so.”

It was crucial for the Legislature to mandate the use of NIBIN, Low said, because cost, mindset, and politics were getting in the way of maximizing the technology.

“Well, it is about the turf wars, unfortunately, and that’s why the state needs to step in and say this is unacceptable,” Low, of Campbell, told NBC Bay Area. “We need to be adults and we need to use the technology that exists to prevent further victimization. We know that many of these guns are used in multiple places, in multiple jurisdictions.”

Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen recently penned an op-ed supporting Low’s bill.

“This is only one solution to a seemingly intractable epidemic of gun violence,” Rosen wrote. “We can do it today. I want evidence collected. I want evidence tested. I want the evidence to be used to arrest the violent criminal. I want evidence to prosecute and convict the violent criminal.”

Also supporting the bill, San Jose’s police Chief Eddie Garcia says his agency has used NIBIN to generate solid investigative leads on cases that had, before NIBIN, seemingly hit dead ends.

“We have a policy that we send (to our lab) every gun and every casing from every scene that we respond to,” Garcia said. “There are fiscal considerations that you need to keep in mind, but to me, it’s just a cost of doing business. We’re trying to solve violent crime, and I can’t allow dollars and cents to really dictate how we solve violent crime in the city.”

While most urban areas are policed by agencies that do participate in NIBIN, huge swaths of California have no access to the network. California Department of Justice crime labs handle firearms evidence for most police departments across 47 counties, and none of it ends up in the national database. There are a few exceptions, as when the ATF provided NIBIN terminals to crime labs in places such as Kern County, Salinas, and Stockton.

As for how this impacts the nationwide NIBIN database network, NBC Bay Area’s reporting partners, the nonprofit journalists at The Trace, found that California is one of only 10 states across the country where state-run crime labs don’t participate.

Ron Nichols, who was an Oakland police officer before he went to work for ATF, says the large gaps in California’s ballistics database jeopardize public safety in communities where gun violence is prevalent.

“What that means for mom and dad at home in these areas that aren’t within the (NIBIN) network in California, is it means that your communities are at much higher risk because of the active shooters on those streets,” Nichols said. “Fewer investigations are really successful in connecting these shootings.”

Nichols, who worked in forensics for 34 years, said he understands that labs don’t want the government telling them what to do – but only to a point.

“I believe that if they don’t want the federal government to tell them what to do, I’m fine with that,” Nichols said. “But what I’m not fine with is ignoring the potential of a program that can close gaps within the network that the state is responsible for that can save lives. You don’t want the federal government looking at you? That’s fine. Then take a good hard look at yourselves.”

There are other holes in California’s ballistics database, experts say, beyond California’s Department of Justice. Some other larger law enforcement agencies, for example, have access to a NIBIN terminal but choose not to submit all recovered guns, bullets and shell casings for ballistics testing and NIBIN entry.

Then there’s the case of the Orange County Crime Lab, which turned to a competing ballistics network developed in Russia when the ATF pulled its NIBIN machines and funding back in 2012. That system, called Evofinder, and still in use to this day by Orange County, doesn’t communicate with NIBIN. So any evidence entered into Orange County’s Evofinder system can’t be seen by NIBIN users and vice versa.

“[Evofinder] gave us the ability to process bullets immediately with the same system that we were doing cartridge cases with at a much lower cost,” said Bruce Houlihan, the director of Orange County’s crime lab.

Houlihan said his agency considered the fact that Evofinder wouldn’t communicate with NIBIN but opted to purchase the system anyway. The Santa Ana Police Department, located a block away from the Orange County Crime Lab, does use NIBIN. But because Orange County and Santa Ana police use different systems, their respective networks don’t communicate with each other, except by special circumstance.

“We thought about that very deeply when we were actually considering this because that (lack of data sharing) was a concern of ours,” Houlihan said. “But considering the number of hits that we got nationally was almost non-existent … that was not really a big concern for us in Orange County.”

Low, for his part, said he’s not giving up on his bill to require NIBIN’s use all over California. Low plans to take it up again next year.

10 COOL TECHNOLOGIES USED IN FORENSIC SCIENCE:-

1. Laser Ablation Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-ICP-MS) : When broken glass is involved in a crime, putting together even tiny pieces can be key to finding important clues like the direction of bullets, the force of impact or the type of weapon used in a crime. Through its highly sensitive isotopic recognition ability, the LA-ICP-MS machine breaks glass samples of almost any size down to their atomic structure. Then, forensic scientists are able to match even the smallest shard of glass found on clothing to a glass sample from a crime scene. In order to work with this type of equipment in conjunction with forensic investigation, a Bachelor’s Degree in Forensic Science is usually necessary.

2. Alternative Light Photography : For a forensic nurse, being able to quickly ascertain how much physical damage a patient has suffered can be the difference between life and death. Although they have many tools at their disposal to help make these calls quickly and accurately, Alternative Light Photography is one of the coolest tools to help see damage even before it is visible on the skin. A camera such as the Omnichrome uses blue light and orange filters to clearly show bruising below the skin’s surface. In order to use this equipment, you would need a MSN in Forensic Nursing.

3. High-Speed Ballistics Photography : You might not think of it right away as a tool for forensic scientists, but ballistics specialists often use high-speed cameras in order to understand how bullet holes, gunshot wounds and glass shatters are created. Virtually anyone, from a crime scene investigator to a firearms examiner, can operate a high-speed camera without any additional education or training. Being able to identify and match bullet trajectories, impact marks and exit wounds must be done by someone with at least a Bachelor’s of Science in Forensic Science.

4. Video Spectral Comparator 2000 : For crime scene investigators and forensic scientists, this is one of the most valuable forensic technologies available anywhere. With this machine, scientists and investigators can look at a piece of paper and see obscured or hidden writing, determine quality of paper and origin and “lift” indented writing. It is sometimes possible to complete these analyses even after a piece of paper has been so damaged by water or fire that it looks unintelligible to the naked eye. In order to run this equipment, at least a Bachelors degree in Forensic Science or a Master’s Degree in Document Analysis is usually required.

5. Digital Surveillance For Xbox (XFT Device) : Most people don’t consider a gaming system a potential place for hiding illicit data, which is why criminals have come to use them so much. In one of the most ground-breaking forensic technologies for digital forensic specialists, the XFT is being developed to allow authorities visual access to hidden files on the Xbox hard drive. The XFT is also set up to record access sessions to be replayed in real time during court hearings. In order to be able to access and interpret this device, a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Forensics is necessary.

6. 3D Forensic Facial Reconstruction : Although this forensic technology is not considered the most reliable, it is definitely one of the most interesting available to forensic pathologists, forensic anthropologists and forensic scientists. In this technique, 3D facial reconstruction software takes a real-life human remains and extrapolates a possible physical appearance. In order to run this type of program, you should have a Bachelor’s Degree in Forensic Science, a Master’s Degree in Forensic Anthropology or a Medical Degree with an emphasis on Forensic Examination and Pathology.

7. DNA Sequencer : Most people are familiar with the importance of DNA testing in the forensic science lab. Still, most people don’t know exactly what DNA sequencers are and how they may be used. Most forensic scientists and crime lab technicians use what’s called DNA profiling to identify criminals and victims using trace evidence like hair or skin samples. In cases where those samples are highly degraded, however, they often turn to the more powerful DNA sequencer, which allows them to analyze old bones or teeth to determine the specific ordering of a person’s DNA nucleobases, and generate a “read” or a unique DNA pattern that can help identify that person as a possible suspect or criminal.

8. Forensic Carbon-14 Dating : Carbon dating has long been used to identify the age of unknown remains for anthropological and archaeological findings. Since the amount of radiocarbon (which is calculated in a Carbon-14 dating) has increased and decreased to distinct levels over the past 50 years, it is now possible to use this technique to identify forensic remains using this same tool. The only people in the forensic science field that have ready access to Carbon-14 Dating equipment are forensic scientists, usually with a Master’s Degree in Forensic Anthropology or Forensic Archaeology.

9. Magnetic Fingerprinting and Automated Fingerprint Identification (AFIS) : With these forensic technologies, crime scene investigators, forensic scientists and police officers can quickly and easily compare a fingerprint at a crime scene with an extensive virtual database. In addition, the incorporation of magnetic fingerprinting dust and no-touch wanding allows investigators to get a perfect impression of fingerprints at a crime scene without contamination. While using AFIS requires only an Associates Degree in Law Enforcement, magnetic fingerprinting usually requires a Bachelor’s Degree in Forensic Science or Crime Scene Investigation.

10. Link Analysis Software for Forensic Accountants : When a forensic accountant is trying to track illicit funds through a sea of paperwork, link analysis software is an invaluable tool to help highlight strange financial activity. This software combines observations of unusual digital financial transactions, customer profiling and statistics to generate probabilities of illegal behavior. In order to accurately understand and interpret findings with this forensic technology, a Master’s Degree in Forensic Accounting is necessary.