"This new search capability will help us catch more criminals sooner," Governor Rell said. "It used to take weeks, and even months, to check fingerprints. Now it takes five minutes to get crucial information on a suspect. This will be a criminal's worst enemy."
The Governor said that in addition to making it easier to identify, apprehend and prosecute suspects, the technology would speed background checks for people who apply for jobs in positions of public trust, such as schoolteachers or bus drivers.
Connecticut State Police routinely attempt to match the fingerprints of suspects against FBI files. Only a few other states can search for a suspect by putting a fingerprint through the federal fingerprint database.
"We have reduced Connecticut's crime rates to their lowest levels in a generation, but we can do even more," Department of Public Safety Commissioner Leonard Boyle said. "Today's announcement shows that we are indeed doing more."
Using the Remote Fingerprint Encoding System, crime scene fingerprints are scanned into a workstation at the Connecticut Department of Public Safety (DPS) and transmitted to the FBI. An automated search of the FBI's database is conducted and a list of comparable suspect fingerprint images is returned on-line to DPS. Fingerprint examiners then review suspect images to determine whether exact matches exist.
Working in cooperation with the FBI, Connecticut is now able to conduct fully automated searches of crime scene fingerprints against the FBI's national fingerprint database of approximately 40 million records.
