FINGERING FUGITIVES
An International Law Enforcement Network at Work
05/02/05
Early last year, a
single mother was brutally beaten and stabbed to death in her home in
Ontario, Canada. A suspect was quickly identified, but he had disappeared
without a trace. Until two months ago, when he committed one crime too
many...
Turns out, this past
February 26, police officers in Fraser, Michigan, happened to arrest
a man for shoplifting. The man said his name was "Boja Fatmir." The
police sent us his fingerprints to verify his identity and to see if
he had a previous criminal history.
So we ran a search
in our Integrated Automated Fingerprint
Identification System—a state-of-the-art digital warehouse
containing more than 49 million criminal records and fingerprints from
suspects all over the world. Bingo! We quickly found that "Boja
Fatmir" was actually the alleged murderer in Canada. Within 20 minutes,
we notified authorities in both Michigan and Canada of the match.
A
criminal justice fluke? Nope, these kinds of matches happen all the time. After all, our Criminal
Justice Information Services Division processes as many as 85,000
fingerprint/criminal history requests a day.
Here are two more
recent success stories:
Death in the
Desert
On February 10, the Conyers, Georgia, Police Department pulled a man over for
a minor traffic violation. He handed over his driver's license, but police
realized it was a fake and arrested him. The officers sent us his fingerprints
electronically, and we soon learned the truth: he was wanted for allegedly
killing his girlfriend and burying her body in a desert outside of Las Vegas
in 1997. We notified authorities in both Georgia and Nevada within 30 minutes
of getting his prints.
Not Just a
Lone Star Shoplifter
On April 5, Arlington, Texas, police sent us fingerprints from a man they'd
arrested for shoplifting. Of course he'd given a false name. In just 12 minutes,
we provided the suspect's real identity. Turns out, he was wanted for murder
in Iowa.
Sophisticated technology.
Electronic information-sharing. Operational links across jurisdictions
and borders. Hallmarks of an international law enforcement network that's
making our communities and the world safer for all.
Links: IAFIS
website | Criminal Justice
Information Services Division website | More
CJIS stories