Academy gets hands on fingerprinting

This is one in a series of stories on the Columbus Police Department’s 14-week Citizen Police Academy course. The writer is a member of the class.

COLUMBUS -- Actual crime scene investigation doesn’t generally match the glamour associated with the three-prong CBS Las Vegas, Miami and New York CSI series.

The work can be tedious, and unlike the televised CSI world instant solutions, lab results can take weeks or even months to obtain.

Participants of the Citizens Police Academy were able to try their hand at fingerprinting each other and lifting latent prints from a variety of items during a recent session of the 14-week program.

Community Service Technician Bobby Pensick and Criminal Investigator Sgt. Tim Kayl took the class through the steps of collecting footprint, fingerprint and DNA evidence and then turned them lose on the evidence to bring home the point that it’s not as easy as it looks on TV.

Mixing the materials to take a footprint cast is not an exact science. Pensick has done it often enough that watching him at work reminds one of watching a veteran cook -- a little of this, a little of that, mix it up and see how it feels; a pinch more of this, and it’s ready to go. Once the casting has hardened, the process to clean it off can take a considerable amount of time. Academy participants will see that final result tonight.

From footprints to fingerprints, the processes become more involved and the results more tenuous and subject to a variety of challenges.

Kayl explained the fingerprint is made up of the natural oils and sweat that everyone leaves behind whenever they touch an object. He said some people’s prints are easier than others to pick up.

“For a fingerprint to be viable we have to be able to pick up 13 points of identification which are found in the loops, whirls and ridges of a latent print,” Kayl said. “The challenge comes in when you try to lift latent prints from the wide variety of surfaces at the scene.”

Pensick and Kayl demonstrated a similar method to the fogging container seen on the television program. It turns out that the fumes emanating from Super Glue will adhere to the oils of a fingerprint and harden it so it can be recovered intact and identified.

Years ago at the Columbus Police Department, the process was accomplished by placing a coffee mug warmer in a covered fish tank with the evidence and the adhesive and waiting until the fumes did the work. Today, a foil packet is opened that contains the needed materials, greatly simplifying the process.

“Dusting for prints” is another common method of identifying prints. The dust is actually finely powdered ink available in a wide variety of colors to make the print stand out from a variety of colored surfaces.

Academy participants worked diligently to lift prints from surfaces such as glass, CDs, door knobs and a plastic molded dashboard from a car. The results varied, and the lesson was clear that many materials that appear smooth are far from it, making it impossible to get a viable print.

“The truth is, in 28 years of working crime scene investigations; I can only recall two cases where fingerprint evidence was the turning point of the case,” Kayl said. “Fingerprint evidence makes good television but its very overrated. In the real world its usually plays only a small part in the prosecution of a case.”

While the collection of footprint and fingerprint evidence is interesting, it’s also somewhat tedious.

Kayl and Pensick’s demonstration of DNA evidence was, in a word, spectacular.

Pensick began by using a cotton swab to collect evidence from an interior door at the warehouse location. After demonstrating how the swab is carefully packaged for the lab he took participants into the utility room and bathroom where he used a black light to highlight evidence otherwise invisible to the naked eye. The utility room yielded a blood stain on a cushion and bleach residue left behind from attempts to clean it.

Pensick took the class to the bathroom then. Viewed without the aid of the black light it appeared a minor cleaning was in order. Seeing the bathroom under the black light was a shocking scene.

“Here we see what we thought was a bathroom in need of a minor cleaning,” Pensick said. “But under the black light we see previously unseen spatter on the walls and evidence of cleaning chemicals, urine and bleach stains that we can’t see otherwise. Whatever you do, don’t think too much about this the next time you go to a hotel.”

Kayl said there were a number of different types of light used by the department to reveal a wide variety of chemicals and compounds at a crime scene.

“Different chemicals and compounds become visible under different types of light because light is actually made up of a variety of frequencies,” Kayl said. “The human eye can only see certain frequencies of light without these aids, but with the right type of light we can see things you’d never know are there otherwise.”