"Sticky fingers; Criminals used to avoid detection by wiping or washing away their fingerprints. That no longer works" by Colin Nickerson, Globe Correspondent | September 29, 2008
Fair warning to felons: A pre-crime snack of Fritos or French fries could be your downfall - as might be that microscopic speck of explosive lodged between the dermal ridges of your thumb or finger.
Scientists at Purdue University in Indiana and Leicester University in Britain, working separately, have discovered new ways of extracting more information from fingerprints - from what a person ate for lunch to what they recently held in their hands, be it bullets, bombs, toxins, or more mundane substances.
Not surprisingly, the work is winning attention from police in the United States, Europe, and Asia, and it is keeping fingerprinting number one in crime-fighting technologies, even in the age of advances in DNA evidence. "The big change is that we're using fingerprints to learn more about the individual, not just make an identification," said John W. Bond, a forensic scientist at the University of Leicester.
With scientific advances, fingerprints are able to offer far more information than ever before, with even greater prospects on the horizon.
I already don't like where this is headed!
Bond is exploring the possibility that fingerprints can divulge information about a suspect's eating habits, especially when the food is salty fast food, since fingerprints are largely water and salt from sweat glands (usually mixed with oily secretions from other parts of the body).
Of more immediate use to police, Bond's lab has found that the sweat exuded from finger pores causes slight but permanent corrosion of metal surfaces touched by an individual, from a bullet to a bomb part. His findings on these indelible etchings left by sweaty fingers were published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences; his ideas about fast food yielding telltale fingerprints are being pursued in the lab.
Better PUT YOUR GLOVES on, both of you!
"Consumers of salty food are going to leave more salt and better fingerprints - that could mean an offender whose diet is high in Big Macs and fries may be easier to snare" than a criminal who follows a healthier diet, he said.
Why, because he can not RUN as FAST?!!
The Purdue research, published last month in the journal Science, involves spraying fingerprints with positively charged water. The droplets dissolve chemicals contained in the fingerprint, and transfer minute amounts of ionized spray to a mass spectrometer that identifies the chemical composition of each molecule.
The technique - known as desorption electrospray ionization - yields a classic fingerprint image. More critically, however, it also identifies the precise chemicals embedded in the telltale swirls. So, for example, prints at the scene of a bomb attack could not only place an individual at the crime, but provide scientific evidence that the individual had handled explosives, a big leap for forensics.
"Fingerprints leave behind a unique distribution of molecular compounds," said R. Graham Cooks, a professor of chemistry at Purdue who led the research.
Some are everyday substances, such as pen ink or shampoo, he says. "But this process will also reveal things like cocaine or RDX" explosive, he said, thus forging a stronger link between the suspect and the crime.
Even if the fingerprint provides no incriminating evidence or belongs to an individual with no police record, the technique could give chemical clues that might help investigators track a suspect - motor oil might lead to a mechanic, for example, or traces of a certain medication might help locate an individual through prescription records.
SIG HEIL, AmeriKa!!!!
The technique can identify infinitesimal chemical traces, down to a billionth of a gram. Moreover, it can coax out a single fingerprint from a mess of prints if one of the individuals has left a chemical signature different from the others - for example, if just one suspect had a bit of chalk dust on one finger, that print could be isolated from the welter.
"By looking for compounds we know to be present in a certain fingerprint, we can separate it from the others and obtain a crystal-clear image," said Demian R. Ifa, a Purdue researcher. Because fingerprinting has been used to nail criminals for well over a century, it carries a whiff of stodginess - something from the eras of Sherlock Holmes or Joe Friday, not the hotshot sleuths of "CSI."
Life ain't a god-damn TV show, assholes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But fingerprints remain the most critical forensic evidence in many whodunits; those daubs of sweat and body fats help crack roughly 10 times more cases involving "unknown suspects" than DNA sleuthing, according to estimates by authorities.
Meanwhile, in a British advance that has already been applied to "cold cases" in the United States, researchers used 2,500-volt jolts of electricity and highly conductive powder to lift prints even from bullet casings and other metal that had been scrubbed.
Where did I leave those gloves?
"Wiping the cartridge down, washing it in hot soapy water makes no difference [with] the process we use," said Bond, the British scientist, whose lab found that the sweat exuded from finger pores causes slight but permanent corrosion.
Well, when you PLANT EVIDENCE I can see it that way, yeah.
The discovery could make obsolete the venerable bad guy dodge of using a few swipes of cloth to cleanse a bullet before loading a crime weapon.
So they want you to believe, anyway.
Western military investigators in Afghanistan are also looking at Bond's process, he said, as a way of lifting invisible prints from roadside bombs. We "expect to be able to recover bomb fragments and test them for the prints of the bombmakers," said Bond. "For the first time, the blast won't be vaporizing all the evidence - the heat will only enhance the [corrosion print] clues we are after." --more--"
Oh, now we find out the REAL REASON for this HORSE SHIT:
TYRANNY, PROPAGANDA, and WAR-PROFITEERING!!!!
