Once again, an important part of a forensic investigation done by an expert that we call a forensic investigator is the actual analysis of fingerprints that he or she gathered as evidence at the scene of the crime. This type of data is extremely precious in all cases related to murder because it can directly lead to the actual criminal or it can provide a valuable trace in finding him. However, one little mistake accidentally done when gathering this type of work is enough to ruin the whole operation of investigation. Again, we are dealing with a huge responsibility that forensic investigator in exposed to. Nevertheless, the new digital scanning devices offer investigators to simple gather and scan the fingerprints from all possible items touched by the criminal before or during the actual crime. Something like this didn’t exist in the past – it made the work of a forensic investigator a nightmare. The requirement to consult archives of thousands and thousands of fingerprints in order to compare the newly one found with some possible old ones was extremely difficult to perform. Today, forensic investigators are given small handy electronic computer devices that may be used to immediately find any connection between fingerprints found at the crime scene. This makes fingerprint analysis, without any doubt, one of the most wise type of investigations that a forensic guy is required to perform, usually the first thing done when arriving at the place.
I had the chance to study the art of fingerprint analysis and to realize how forensic investigators collect fingerprints a long time ago. However, when I was still at the beginning of the way of becoming one I had no clue why do they call fingerprints one of the simplest types of forensic. I understand that it might not have anything to do with other much more complicated analysis that an investigator should be able to perform, but still, a lot of responsibility is held when doing something like this. In comparison with other chapters of the daily work time life of a forensic investigator, fingerprint analysis and gathering of this type of evidence in general cannot be directly considered dirty work since it is quite clean. The only “full contact” type of work is the one done when dealing with the fingers of the deceased person or the objects that he managed to touch before the actual death occurred. Afterward, it is just a matter of computer scanning and match comparison in those libraries of millions other fingerprints that exist out there in the particular database of the intelligence agency that you are working for (it might be the policy, military, CIA, FBI, etc). While getting a finger print match is in most of the cases not hard thing to do, it might take days till you can see the real connection from what you’ve found and the actual crime that occurred. Sometimes you are going to deal with the fingerprints of totally wrong individuals and your job is to prove their innocence in relation with the crime.
So what makes fingerprint analysis so important at the end of the day? Well, first of all learning how to perform it requires a certain time of study. Understanding how fingerprint scanning devices work and how to process the data is also quite complicated and requires special training. A forensic investigator will always find the necessary time to enhance his knowledge, abilities and skills with this type of information in order to be able to save any precious time when discovering the fingerprints at the crime scene, because the sooner they appear on his monitor, the faster the police or any other law enforcement agencies can start searching for the murderer or the criminal. Fingerprints are what makes us all different, and sometimes serial killers or even specialized killers can produce false fingerprints and stick them to their fingers in order to lead the investigation into error. In such case the whole fingerprint analysis part is getting more and more complicated, since a forensic investigator has to be able to determine is those are real fingerprints or not. Criminals, on the other side of the law, understand pretty good that the fingerprint related information can get them easily caught and arrested, that’s why most professionals got used to cleaning their foot and finger prints or intentionally leaving wrong ones for the police agents, detectives and forensic investigators to have a barrier of uncertainty in front of them. While sometimes it is impossible to realize whenever the fingerprints are false or real, it requires good years of actual practice to be able to determine this and those who have such abilities are extremely valuable for the organization that they are working for.
