ROGER MORONEY
It's like something out of one of those American crime shows. The ones where fingerprints are scanned electronically and instantly identified on a great national database.
No messy ink, no waiting for results ... all instant. The stuff of Hollywood imagination, surely.
"Not at all," Napier police senior sergeant Andy
Sloane said, smiling at the suggestion the station's new $80,000 "Livescan" fingerprinting machine had been lifted out of a show like CSI: New York.
"No it's better than that."
The new machine has been on-line since yesterday after a week-long set-up and training programme - with staff requiring only an hour or so to get up to speed with its use.
Unlike the ink and pad system, the new electronic print scanner delivers a more detailed and better quality image.
Palms and fingertips are placed on a screen and an image scanned. It appears on a screen where the image is given a quality rating which must be above 70 out of 100.
Mr Sloane said one person who had been fingerprinted on the new system remarked "that's a good one" after one of his efforts recorded a 90-plus quality rating.
The main advantage is instant recognition of an individual from the police central database.
In the past a person would be fingerprinted and the inked results sent off to be checked to ensure accurate identification - which could take up to a week to have them matched up.
"Now it checks it off in about 30 seconds."
However, the old ink and pad system which has been around for more than a century (Scotland Yard began its fingerprint section in 1901) is not yet destined for retirement.
It will still be used where immediate hard copies are required, for passports, or in relation to some crime scenes where prints are taken.
The new "Livescan" machines had also been installed at Hastings and Gisborne police stations as part of a network of main stations throughout the country.
