NCJ Number
223920
Journal
Law and Order Volume: 56 Issue: 6 Dated: June 2008 Pages: 50-52
Date Published
June 2008
Length
3 pages
Annotation
This article provides a case study of one police department’s use of handheld terminals that put biometrics and facial recognition software into the field.
Abstract
The Fairfax County Police Department’s (Virginia) most recent technological advancement is the addition of handheld biometric terminals that cross-reference the county’s regional fingerprint database with its photo files, which improves the accuracy of ID discovery by officers in the field. The foundation for this technology was laid in 1983 when the Fairfax County Police Department (FCPD) agreed to participate in the Northern Virginia Automated Regional Identification System (NOVARIS), an automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) database that served as a common resource for several adjoining municipalities as well as the U.S. Secret Service. This system stores nearly 700,000 fingerprint cards of arrested individuals and more than 84,000 latent fingerprints. In 1999, photos were added to the NOVARIS system. In 2004 the FCPD, along with Washington, DC, and Maryland police agencies, received funding to upgrade and expand NOVARIS into a fully integrated regional system with high interoperability, increased search speed, and improved imaging capability. With this photo/fingerprint database in place, the FCPD just needed to make the photos and fingerprints more readily available to officers in the field. The county’s NOVARIS integrator recommended the DSV2+TURBO from Datastrip Inc. This handheld biometric terminal has a fingerprint scanner and card reader, along with the ability to take photos on the scene. This biometric reader can scan left-hand or right-hand fingers, has long battery life, and provides superior graphics clarity for photo identifications. The units were modified to work with Viisage facial recognition software in order to match photos in its database.