The time it takes to solve a crime just got a little shorter.

The Orangeburg Department of Public Safety announced Wednesday its automated fingerprint unit aimed at identifying prints within minutes instead of months is now up and running.

“When a person leaves their fingerprints and we detect that, we can identify that person that much quicker,” said ODPS Chief Wendell Davis. “It’s just an effective crime-fighting tool that we believe will reduce our crime numbers.”

It’s called the AFIS, or automated fingerprint identification system, and it now connects area law enforcement agencies to the rest of the country.



ODPS Crime Scene Investigator Carl Shultz said the state’s fingerprint database contains more than 25 million prints of current and past, known and unknown prints collected in the Palmetto State.

“We start with a state search,” Shultz said. “And if that doesn’t come back with a match, I can do an I-AFIS, which is through the FBI.”

Demonstrating the process, Shultz said a fingerprint gathered from a crime scene is first photographed by the unit.

That photograph is then displayed on the unit’s monitor so the operator can manually examine the print for the unique characteristics that set apart each individual’s print.

Once high points have been manually established in the print, it is entered into the AFIS system. The system then develops its own high points.

After searching the state’s database, the system can provide the crime scene specialist with up to 18 possible matches. The matches are then manually examined for a positive match.

Once the photographed print is entered into the system, the process takes just a few minutes.

“It can take as little as 15 to 20 seconds or it can take 15 to 20 minutes,” Shultz said.

But that beats the old method, which was sending the fingerprint to the State Law Enforcement Division for analysis.

“It depended on the backlog and the priority of the case,” Shultz said. “But it was months” before a result could be expected.

The $91,000 AFIS was purchased with a federal grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.

The AFIS system is the department’s latest high-tech addition.

In August 2007, the first phase of a joint ODPS and Claflin University project started with a gas chromatograph/mass spectrometer.

Simply put, it’s a high-tech piece of equipment that looks like an overgrown microwave that is able to separate individual chemicals in a sample. In the hands of police, it’s used for drug analysis. It is operated by David Martin, a SLED-certified drug analyst.

More phases are planned, including a grant-funded DNA laboratory.

“We’re excited about being able to provide certification for law enforcement,” said Dr. Rebecca Bullard-Dillard, a professor of biology at Claflin. “We also have faculty members who are conducting forensic research projects.

“There’s a nationwide push to ensure that forensics is treated as a science rather than an art.”

And, finally, at some point in the future, a ballistics testing facility is to sever the department’s dependence on other law enforcement agencies to analyze evidence.

T&D Staff Writer Richard Walker can be reached by e-mail at rwalker@timesanddemocrat.com or by telephone at 803-533-5516. Discuss this and other stories on-line at TheTandD.com.

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