Digital fingerprint mandate stirs cost concerns
Starting in January, a state mandate requires that all police agencies submit criminal fingerprints electronically, but many local departments say they will not be able to make the deadline because of the high cost of switching from the old ink-and-paper method.
Departments that cannot afford to purchase digital fingerprinting equipment, which goes for about $30,000, may face a choice between paying another department to process their fingerprints or incurring the additional cost of taking suspects to neighboring communities to use available machines.
Potsdam Police Chief John A. Kaplan said his department cannot afford either type of machine it would need to do fingerprinting electronically. A live-scan machine scans a finger or fingers placed on the machine itself, while a card-scan machine scans ink prints from a traditional fingerprint card. Mr. Kaplan said that cash-strapped municipal departments just don't have the funds.
"It's extraordinarily expensive," he said.
Because of the high cost of obtaining the equipment, Mr. Kaplan said, many small departments like his have been unable to purchase them since the mandate was issued in 2008.
Recently, state officials sent letters to some police agencies, allowing them to continue submitting ink fingerprints "until we can make other arrangements,"the chief said. But the departments eventually will have to go digital, so many agencies have begun applying for grants to pay for the equipment.
The Ogdensburg Police Department is trying to fund the purchase of a live-scan machine through a grant program because, according to Lt. William David Polniak, the department's budget is stretched too thin to accommodate the expensive equipment otherwise.
In Potsdam, Mr. Kaplan has applied for six separate grants to fund a scanner. The chief said he hopes at least one of the grants will be approved, especially since so few of the municipal police departments in St. Lawrence County have the machines.
Of St. Lawrence County's seven municipal police departments — Canton, Gouverneur, Massena, Norfolk, Norwood, Ogdensburg and Potsdam — only Massena has purchased a digital scanner.
Massena Police Chief Timmy J. Currier said his department's live-scan machine should be up and running in time to meet the state's January deadline. The machine and associated software cost the department $27,000 and were paid for through the department's asset forfeiture fund, which is generated by money and property seized during arrests.
"We will be in compliance by January," Mr. Currier said. "We're not completely there yet — we still have a few staff members to train on the system — but we're close."
In Franklin County, the only available scanner is a card scan system at the Sheriff's Department, but officials there say the machine has not yet been installed or used.
In Jefferson County, small departments are taking different steps to comply with the new regulation.
Sackets Harbor officers will have to drive their defendants to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department in Watertown to use digital scanners there, according to village Police Chief Richard G. Coseo.
"That's another cost occurrence," he said, referring to the extra time and fuel that will be spent to drive to Watertown. "The scan thing is great, but it doesn't do us small departments any good."
While the costs are a concern, some departments have taken an optimistic view of the new technology, which may help officers avoid some of the pitfalls of the "ink and roll" method by creating less mess and yielding clearer, more consistent prints.
Clayton Police Chief Kevin J. Patenaude, who has used the electronic scanners before, said the new technology will be worth every dime.
"In the long run, it's going to be very effective," Chief Patenaude said.
The Clayton department does not have the live-scan technology in place. However, the department is applying for a federal grant in hopes of purchasing the equipment as soon as possible, Mr. Patenaude said.
Smaller departments may be able to make use of available scanners larger police agencies have purchased.
The Norwood Police Department, which is staffed only part time, will take its defendants to Potsdam or Canton to be printed with an available digital machine, Mayor James H. McFaddin said.
"We're a part-time police force, so that cost is really prohibitive and kind of ridiculous," Mr. McFaddin said.
The St. Lawrence County Sheriff's Department and State Police Troop B, which covers St. Lawrence, Franklin, Essex, Clinton and Hamilton counties, both are equipped with digital scanners in their Canton offices, which may be an option for some of the area's smaller agencies.
State Police Capt. Michael J. Girard said the agency plans to equip some of its other locations with card scanners in coming months to help prevent troopers in Massena and Gouverneur from having to drive to Canton to use a scanner there.
He said state police have been contacted by several local departments about using their scanners as well.
"We've also been talking to the Department of Environmental Conservation about entering into a memorandum of understanding to do their fingerprint cards," Mr. Girard said. "We're willing to help out local departments, but we don't have a lot of the scanners yet, either."
St. Lawrence County Sheriff Kevin M. Wells said his department has scanners at its station and at the jail, both in Canton. Other departments have contacted him about sharing the machines, though none has made arrangements to do so, he said.
"We've been having discussions with the chiefs," Mr. Wells said. "Obviously sharing a machine can't be done as efficiently as having your own, but there are different opportunities out there."
Police chiefs say the biggest problem with sharing the equipment will be travel costs. Mr. Kaplan said the Potsdam department processes more than 300 criminal fingerprint cards each year, while Massena inks more than 500 annually, according to officials there. Without having scanners in-house, transporting each of those defendants to Canton to use live scan machines could prove costly and cumbersome for local officers, while contracting with another department for card scan services likely would be an expensive proposition.
"We're anticipating about 325 fingerprint cards this year," Mr. Kaplan said. "I don't think it's reasonable for us to ask another agency to process those for us."
Several police chiefs noted the biggest advantage of the new system is that the software alerts an officer immediately when a print is unreadable, so another can be taken. And the whole process takes about 10 seconds, officials say.
Departments traditionally have mailed the older ink-and-roll cards to the state's Department of Criminal Justice Services for processing, only to have some of them rejected weeks later for being smudged or unacceptable.
DCJS spokeswoman Janine Kava said using digital prints dramatically reduces the turnaround time in generating criminal histories and background checks. The process used to take up to several weeks with mailed ink cards, but now takes as little as 30 minutes to return results to police on a defendant when digital prints are submitted.
"It's very advantageous for law enforcement," Ms. Kava said. "There's an art to taking ink-and-roll fingerprints — it's not as easy as it would seem to be. With the electronic technology, it tells you if you've captured the print correctly."
As of August, 95.1 percent of all fingerprintable arrests were submitted to the state electronically, Ms. Kava said.
Smaller departments in rural areas like the north country likely represent the bulk of the fingerprints still being submitted by mail, she said.
"We do understand that for smaller departments, that's a lot of money," Ms. Kava said. "We've been encouraging smaller departments to work in concert with the larger jurisdictions to make that happen. We want to move to all digital, but if an agency, for whatever reason, doesn't have the ability, we're not going to reject the mailed fingerprint cards."
Times staff writer Jaegun Lee contributed to this report.
