By William Moore
Daily Journal
TUPELO – Tupelo Police hope to use a federal grant and a retired expert to establish a latent fingerprint lab in Tupelo.
Currently, detectives have to send any fingerprint work to one of the state’s crime labs, either in Jackson or in Batesville.
“The turnaround time can be six months or more, which puts a hamper on an investigation,” said Tupelo Police Chief Bart Aguirre. “If we can do it in-house, you would only be looking at a matter of days.”
The bulk of the $38,000 grant would cover the start-up equipment and supplies. In addition to the powder, chemicals and alternate light sources to develop prints, the lab will require a dedicated computer connected with state and federal databases in order to run queries through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS).
Modern print analysis uses computers and algorithms to compare distinctive points in the fingerprints. It takes a highly trained expert to be able to properly identify the minutia points.
“Fortunately, we have a retired latent print instructor who wants to help get us off the ground and will even be able to train some of our folks,” said Aguirre.
Once operational, the Tupelo Police Department would not keep the latent print lab to itself. It would be able to accept work from other law enforcement agencies to help offset the cost.
“It would be just like our drug lab now,” said Aguirre. “We take in evidence from other agencies. We do drug testing and drug identification, and our turnaround is quicker than the state crime lab.”
It will be this fall before the city knows if it received the grant from the U.S. Department of Justice.
The delay is fine with TPD, which had to relocate operations this month because of black mold in its buildings on Court and Front streets. Aguirre said there is space already allocated for the expanded crime lab in the new headquarters under construction in downtown Tupelo.
william.moore@journalinc.com