Just three-and-a-half weeks after the official commissioning of the digital-based Automated Palm and Finger Information System (APFIS), Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas is reporting that 64 fingerprint matches have been confirmed and suspects have been identified for various crimes, including murders and break-ins.

The commissioner, who was addressing the St Ann Lay Magistrates Association in Ocho Rios last night, revealed that of the 64 matches, 19 scenes of crime cases were linked to 19 criminal records.

In what is being touted as a significant achievement in crime fighting in Jamaica, the crime chief said the new technological system will go a far way in enabling the police to more quickly apprehend criminals.

“This new technology at our command assists in the early identification of suspects and logically speedier arrests will accrue as a direct result of this early detection,” said Thomas. “It will also significantly reduce the time persons spend in our jails.”

“It will also mean an increase in the clear-up rates of crime and better and faster compilation of files forwarded to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions…. Lengthy delays will become a thing of the past and I am tonight guaranteeing that the entire process, from making requests for police records to the time of actually receiving verification, will take no longer than one hour.”

Civilians will also benefit from the new technology as the processing time for obtaining visas, work permits and related documents will be significantly cut, the commissioner said.

Prior to the acquisition of the APFIS, the police relied on manual paper-based replicas of fingerprints to nab criminals. This made the retrieval and matching processes protracted and time consuming, producing an average of 15 matches per year.

These paper-based 10-finger prints – totalling 230,000 up to the time of the new system’s arrival – as well as 3,339 latent prints taken from crime scenes, were scanned, digitally converted and loaded into the APFIS.

The APFIS has reduced to three to five minutes the time for a hit or match to be made.

As a result of the rapidly evolving scientific and technological developments worldwide, policemen and women wage a continuous war against increasingly high-tech crimes, many of which they are not equipped to handle given financial restraints, but Commissioner Thomas is convinced that the police force needs to actively employ modern strategies in order to be efficient crime fighters.

To this end, plans are underway for other technologically advanced equipment to be utilised by the constabulary force, including digital fingerprinting palm devices and digital photography.

However, Thomas warned that these improvements, while being capable of significantly helping in the war against crime, are not magical instruments.

“Nothing can replace the pounding of the policeman’s feet on the beat, the siren of the police car on patrol or, for that matter, the engagement of citizens in community meetings called by the police,” he said. “These technical innovations form part of our overall policing strategy. One does not replace the other; they complement each other.”