On Q Professional Investigations

This week, the FBI dedicated its new 360,000-square-foot Biometric Technology Center (BTC), located on the campus of our Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Division in Clarksburg, West Virginia. The BTC, an enhancement of the ongoing collaboration between the FBI’s Biometric Center of Excellence and the Department of Defense’s Forensics and Biometrics Agency, will—once fully operational—encourage even more joint biometric investigations, along with additional research and development.

FBI Executive Assistant Director Amy Hess, Science and Technology Branch—with CJIS Assistant Director Stephen Morris—welcomed Bureau and Department of Defense (DOD) officials and employees, state and local dignitaries, business and community leaders, and others to the ceremony. “The BTC,” according to Hess, “will be a home for a joint biometric research and development efforts between the FBI, the Pentagon, and other agencies.”

Over the past few years, the FBI has been working with the DOD to use biometrics to identity terrorists and criminals who threaten our homeland and our citizens. The BTC facility will enable the Bureau’s CJIS Division, which has the largest centralized collection of biometric information in the world, and the DOD, with its military biometrics database systems, to make advances in a variety of identification technologies like DNA, iris recognition, voice patterns, facial patterns, and palm prints. It will also allow us to move these technologies and resulting biometric tools more quickly from the laboratory into the hands of those who work to combat terrorism and protect the public from dangerous criminal activity.

FBI and DOD biometrics experts working side-by-side in the facility will also focus on biometrics product certification, training, standards development, privacy rights, and research and development into emerging technologies.

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Fingerprints have been used by law enforcement and forensics experts to successfully identify people for more than 100 years. Though fingerprints are assumed to be infallible personal identifiers, there has been little scientific research to prove this claim to be true. As such, there have been repeated challenges to the admissibility of fingerprint evidence in courts of law.

“We wanted to answer the question that has plagued law enforcement and forensic science for decades: Is fingerprint pattern persistent over time?” said Anil Jain, University Distinguished Professor, computer science and engineering, at Michigan State University. “We have now determined, with multilevel statistical modeling, that fingerprint recognition accuracy remains stable over time.”

Jain, along with his former Ph.D. student Soweon Yoon, who is now with the National Institute of Standards and Technology, used fingerprint records of 15,597 subjects apprehended multiple times by the Michigan State Police over a time span varying from five to 12 years.

The results show that fingerprint recognition accuracy doesn’t change even as the time between two fingerprints being compared increases.

The paper by Yoon and Jain, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the largest and most thorough study of the persistence of Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems, or AFIS, accuracy.

Experts agree that Jain’s research addresses one of the most fundamental issues in fingerprint identification and is of great importance to law enforcement and forensic science:

“This study is one of the fundamental pieces of research on a topic that has always been taken for granted. The permanence of fingerprints has not been systematically studied since the seminal work of Herschel was presented in Galton’s book: Finger Prints (1892, Macmillian & Co.).

Although operational practice has shown that the papillary patterns on our hands and feet are extremely stable and subject to limited changes (apart from scars), the study presented in PNAS provides empirical and statistical evidence.” Professor Christophe Champod, Université de Lausanne, Switzerland.

“This study is a monumental achievement and one that will benefit forensic science teams worldwide.” Capt. Greg Michaud, director of the Forensic Science Division, Michigan State Police.

“Dr. Jain’s analytic quantification on fingerprint persistence of the results significantly support early studies on fingerprint persistence and yet further support legal requirements for peer review and publication.” Jim Loudermilk, senior level technologist at the FBI Science and Technology Branch.

Jain’s research was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Center for Identification Technology Research.

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A man is facing rape charges in an attack that happened more than 20 years ago after Manhattan prosecutors said a DNA sample linked him to the crime.

Joseph Giardala pleaded not guilty Friday in state Supreme Court to charges that he attacked a 25-year-old woman after she left a West Village movie theater on Jan. 23, 1995. Prosecutors say Mr. Giardala, now 44 years old, forced the woman into a nearby building’s vestibule and raped and robbed her at knife point.

Mr. Giardala’s attorney, Richard Ma, declined to comment on the case. His client was ordered held without bail; his next court appearance is set for June 4.

Assistant District Attorney Melissa Mourges said prosecutors identified the suspect through DNA. Immediately after the rape, the woman went to a hospital, where DNA from the attacker was collected as part of a rape-evidence kit, Ms. Mourges said.

The attack was reported to police, but leads were exhausted and the case went cold, she said.

The kit was tested in 2001 as part of an effort to tackle a backlog of rape-kit cases and the data uploaded to the national DNA database, Ms. Mourges said, but no match was found.

Under the statute of limitations, prosecutors had 10 years from the time the crime was committed to file charges. So, in 2003, Ms. Mourges said, the Manhattan district attorney’s office obtained a “John Doe” indictment listing the attacker’s DNA profile in lieu of a name.

Ms. Mourges said the office was informed April 7 that the DNA matched Mr. Giardala, based on a DNA profile that was entered into the national database in Florida earlier this year.

A warrant was issued for Mr. Giardala’s arrest and authorities apprehended him at Los Angeles International Airport last week. He was accompanied to New York by detectives from the Manhattan Special Victims Squad on Thursday night, Ms. Mourges said.

Prosecutors said Friday the arrest stemmed from a project begun in 2000 that led to the testing of 17,000 sexual-assault evidence kits in police storage.

In denying bail for Mr. Giardala, Judge Bonnie Wittner cited his “total lack of ties to New York City and his nomadic existence.”

Mr. Giardala had close to a dozen credit cards and several driver’s licenses from different states when he was arrested, Ms. Mourges said. In the past five months, he had used an electronic benefits card in Florida, New Jersey, New York and Los Angeles, she said.

She said that in the 12 months before April 11, Mr. Giardala purchased more than 200 airline tickets for destinations as far-flung as Moscow; several countries in Europe and South America; and Japan, Hawaii and Guam.

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A lawsuit filed in Cook County Court pits a losing applicant in the Illinois Medical Marijuana derby, against the State Department of Agriculture, and indirectly, the biggest winner in the sweepstakes for the coveted licenses.

“In my world, they changed the rules,” says Andy James, chairman of PMRX, the unsuccessful bidder on a cultivation license in District 21. “We had to file a lawsuit to get any information. Nobody’s talking.”

At issue, is the fact that PMRX lost out to Cresco Labs, a seeming marijuana juggernaut which received the three highest scores in the contest for what promise to be lucrative licenses to grow medical pot in Illinois.

The suit contends the state changed the security scoring rules at midstream, converting to pass/fail what had been a numerical score which could have spelled the difference between applicants with close ratings.

“We’re not sure the implementation of the process, i.e. the scoring, was done pursuant to the rules,” James said. And he said one of the reasons for his lawsuit, was to see his own scores, which so far, have been kept confidential.

“Can you imagine a history class, and the only person who gets a grade is the person with the highest score?” he asked. “No sour grapes here. Sure we would have loved to have won the license. But when you spend the money we spent, would just love to know that it was done correctly or fairly.”

James also alleges that someone from Cresco met with then-governor Pat Quinn while the application process was unfolding.

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Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, was among only 13 lawmakers who voted against the Texas Stand Your Ground law when it passed in 2007.

A bill introduced Thursday is his attempt eight years later to stop what he feels have been the law’s unintended consequences.

“The problem we have is that there’s a perception of certain people that who they are makes them dangerous,” said Coleman. “You’ve seen people walk across the street to avoid certain people, which might be appropriate. But shooting them because they perceive that that individual is actually going to hurt them and have that be legal under the law is just not appropriate.”

Coleman filed House Bill 1627 on Thursday to modify the existing Stand Your Ground law. HB 1627, while not affecting the right to use deadly force in one’s home or “castle”, would allow the use of lethal force in other self-defense situations only if a person cannot safely retreat. Texas is one of nearly two dozen states that currently do not have a so-called duty to retreat before someone opts to use deadly force.

“People can’t be judge, jury and executioner,” Coleman said, referring to the current law that he says disproportionately puts a target on minorities. “You know they used to lynch people. And that was people taking the law into their own hands.”

In introducing HB 1627, Coleman mentioned the 2007 case of Joe Horn in Pasadena. Horn, despite a 911 operator pleading with him to stay inside his house and not confront the two burglars he was watching through a bedroom window as they robbed his neighbor’s house, exited his home armed with a shotgun and confronted the burglars as they ran away. He shot and killed them both and a Harris County grand jury chose not to indict him. Coleman says under his bill Horn would have been charged with a crime.

“I don’t blame anybody for being apprehensive. But apprehension should not give an individual the right to take someone’s life,” said Coleman.

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State officials have awarded a business license to a medical marijuana dispensary planned for the corner of North and Harlem avenues in Oak Park.

Future Transactions Holdings, LLC won the sole license to operate a marijuana dispensary in Oak Park, River Forest, Berwyn, Cicero and Riverside. It will be one of the state’s 60 dispensaries under the four-year pilot program.

The dispensary’s tentative name is “District 36,” named after the Illinois State Police district it’s located within.

Its owner is Chicagoan Brad Zerman. He’s also the CEO of Sky Processing, an ATM processing service company located at 3360 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago, which already processes cash for marijuana dispensaries in Colorado.

After talking to some of his clients at a trade show in Colorado and some of his Chicago-area friends, Zerman decided to apply for three licenses within Illinois. One application was in Highland Park, one was in Evanston and one was in Oak Park. In total, after hiring consultants, the three applications cost him about $200,000.

“There are just so many components to this, there was no room for error,” said Zerman. “The state could just go to the next applicant because it was so competitive.”

When applying for the licenses, Zerman said he chose municipalities that were “forward-thinking” and would not impose additional zoning regulations that would force his business into a manufacturing zone, like Morton Grove or Niles.

“According to Oak Park’s zoning department all we have to do is apply for a village business license,” said Zerman. “And the state is imposing such a high bar for security that it made sense to open the business in a commercial area with high traffic that’s well lit and regularly patrolled by police.”

Paul Stephanides, Oak Park’s village attorney, said the dispensary would most likely be regulated within the village the same way pharmacies currently are.

In a statement Monday, Gov. Bruce Rauner’s General Counsel Jason Barclay said his office conducted a comprehensive review of the process ex-Gov. Pat Quinn’s administration used to recommend applicants for the Medical Cannabis Pilot Program.

Barclay said Quinn’s administration imposed arbitrary scoring cutoffs that were not authorized in the state law and that agencies conducted character and fitness reviews, which they suggested came at the wrong stage of the process. He also said some applicants were disqualified without clear procedures.

“These actions may result in some additional minimal delay in a limited number of districts and for that, we apologize to the patient community,” Barclay said.

The state estimates that it will take at least six months for most of Illinois’ marijuana growing centers to get their operations up and running now that they’ve been approved.

For now, medical marijuana in Illinois is a pilot program with a four-year life span. If the state doesn’t renew the medical marijuana law, Zerman and other marijuana businesses in Illinois may lose their investment. But he’s not worried, for now.

“I’m an entrepreneur,” said Zerman. “Yes, it is a risk, but given where the state is going, and provided it does a good job overseeing these businesses, I don’t see why they wouldn’t renew the law.”

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Recent revelations about a proposed federal law enforcement program might have some friends and families drawing lots to decide who drives to the next gun show.

Criminals rarely obtain guns from gun shows. A Department of Justice survey of state and federal inmates, found that only 0.7 percent of those polled had acquired a firearm that they possessed at the time of their offense from a gun show. Unfortunately, this didn’t stop at least one federal official from suggesting that the sophisticated tools of the modern surveillance state be turned on unsuspecting gun show attendees.

Documents obtained in a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Civil Liberties Union reveal that, in 2009, the Drug Enforcement Administration contemplated using License Plate Readers (LPRs) to track vehicle traffic from gun shows. A highly redacted email from an unknown DEA official suggests the program was past infancy, and stated, “DEA Phoenix Division Office is working closely with ATF on attacking the guns going to [redacted] and the guns shows to include programs/operation with LPRs at the gun shows.”

ACLU correctly points out the danger of such technology in an article on their website, explaining, “An automatic license plate reader cannot distinguish between people transporting illegal guns and those transporting legal guns, or no guns at all; it only documents the presence of any car driving to the event. Mere attendance at a gun show, it appeared, would have been enough to have one’s presence noted in a DEA database.”

The proposed program is even more disturbing when placed into the larger context of the Justice Department’s ongoing general license plate tracking program. A January 26 article from the Wall Street Journal explains the broad contours of DOJ LPR surveillance. The piece states, “The Justice Department has been building a national database to track in real time the movement of vehicles around the U.S., a secret domestic intelligence-gathering program that scans and stores hundreds of millions of records about motorists.” The authors go on to explain the wide availability of the collected data, writing, “Many state and local law-enforcement agencies are accessing the database for a variety of investigations… putting a wealth of information in the hands of local officials who can track vehicles in real time on major roadways.” They further note that this national database “allows any police agency that participates to quickly search records of many states for information about a vehicle.”

According to a January 27 Wall Street Journal article focusing specifically on the gun show surveillance proposal, DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart told the paper, “The proposal in the email was only a suggestion. It was never authorized by DEA, and the idea under discussion in the email was never launched.” Further, the article stated that DOJ officials were quick to deny any BATFE involvement in the LPR scheme. However, as has been made clear by the events of the last two years, public statements by federal officials regarding the scope of federal surveillance activities should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism.

DEA’s proposed indiscriminate gun show surveillance places an unacceptable burden on the privacy of law-abiding citizens exercising their Second Amendment rights and even smacks of firearm registration. Further, such tactics infringe upon rights protected by the First Amendment. Gun shows are far more than just shopping opportunities for gun buyers. They are also community gatherings that often serve as venues for political expression and organizing. As such, they are subject to the First Amendment’s rights of freedom of association and to peaceably assemble and should be free from government activity that could chill free and open participation.

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For more than a century, fingerprints have been crucial to the investigation of crime and are still responsible for more identifications than DNA evidence. Now, a University of Huddersfield researcher is responsible for breakthroughs that will make fingerprinting a more valuable forensic tool than ever. Fraudsters are among the offenders who will be easier to detect, thanks to the work of Dr. Benjamin Jones.

He headed a team that has discovered a technique for taking fingerprints from laser-printed paper and — crucially — detecting whether or not the mark was made before or after it was printed on.

An award-winning article describing the new technique explains that “in cases such as fraud or counterfeiting it can be imperative to know whether a fingerprint has been deposited before or after the paper is printed with compromising material, and therefore be able to assess whether a suspect is associated with the printed evidence.”

In a project that received £170,000 funding from The Leverhulme Trust, Jones and his team discovered that a scientific technique known as secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) — which analyses surfaces at the microscale — can provide a detailed chemical map of the layers on laser-printed paper — including fingerprints — and the order in which they were deposited. This means, for example, that a suspect could no longer claim that he or she had handled a piece of blank paper when simply refilling a photocopier or printer.

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BRIDGEPORT CT Oct 14 2014 — A proposal to keep sex offenders and other criminals out of city schools by doing instant background checks and issuing photo IDs to all visitors could well be jettisoned before it is even tried.

Parents, members of the public and even school board members expressed concern that instead of keeping students safe, the system would become a deterrent to parent involvement for individuals who are undocumented, have pasts they want to put behind them or who worry about personal information being collected and stored by the school.

“What I am hearing as a parent, this is going to be a big problem in our district,” Tammy Boyle, president of the District Parent Advisory Council, said. “I can guarantee you if this is anywhere pertaining to what it seems like … it is going to be a problem.”

The idea, according to Police Lt. Paul Grech, who oversees school district security, is to create a visitor access system that is better than simply asking visitors to sign in and wear a green visitor sticker.

“We’re committed to further ensuring our kids are safeguarded against sex offenders at school,” Grech said. “This system helps us do just that by using 21st century technology.”

He told members of the school board’s security committee this week that the Fast Pass system — as it is known — is a tool other districts are turning to.

Using a portion of a $1.4 million school security grant the district received from the state following the December 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting that killed 20 first graders and six adults, the plan would require all visitors to a city school to show identification or give their name, which would be entered into a computer.

The computer would conduct instant background checks, and a printer would print out a temporary picture ID with the date, time and location.

About $20,000 would be enough to equip three schools with the system. Of that, $4,000 would come from the city.

Grech wants to try the system out first at the Fairchild Wheeler Interdistrict Campus, work out the bugs, and then bring it to the city’s other high schools.

The system could be customized to collect as much, or as little information, as the board wants, said James Denton, a supervisor of school security. In the case of evacuation, it would also tell officials who was in the building.

“It is a way to give security guards … another tool on their belt,” Denton said.

Now in place
All 37 school buildings in the district have one or more security guards and share about a dozen school police officers, according to officials.

There are also security cameras in and around schools, but not enough. Board member Dave Hennessey said he wishes instead of a visitor access system, the state grant money could be applied to more pressing needs, like extra guards and security cameras for the 1,200 student Cesar Batalla School.

District schools have locked doors and a buzzer entry system. Since Sandy Hook, security guards began asking to see identification of visitors.

“The last thing we want is parents to feel that the police are going to come get them,” said Hernan Illingworth, a school board member.

“We need to do a better job of keeping our children safe,” Illingworth said.

At Central High School, which his daughter attends, Illingworth said even with security guards and metal detectors at the front entrance, people seem to be able to wander the hallways unchecked.

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For three decades, the key to identifying a pedestrian struck and killed near an interstate exit ramp sat at investigators’ fingertips. They just didn’t realize it.

The man was walking on Interstate 65 in central Kentucky in 1984 when he was struck by a semitruck. With no identification, the only clues he left were a couple of tattoos, a pack of cigarettes and his fingerprints.

The prints yielded no matches. John Doe’s body remained unidentified thirty years later, when the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System asked state police to review cold cases.

Forensic analyst Keith Dollinger went through John Doe’s file and noticed something odd about the ridges and patterns of the fingerprints.

“It looked to me like right hand prints were on the left hand card because of the way the ridges went through,” he said.

He was right: Investigators had transposed the prints. The right hand was on a card labeled “left” and vice versa.

“Once he figured that that out, it kind of snowballed from there,” Kentucky State Police Lt. Brian Sumner said.

Now, the man has a name: Roy Andrew Langley, who sometimes went by the alias “Red Anderson.” He spent his life in and out of police custody and was 34 when he died by the side of the road in Elizabethtown.

A preliminary identification was made in May, and this week, the Hardin County Coroner’s Office tracked down Langley’s sister in Houston for confirmation. Attempts by The Associated Press to reach Debra Langley Hamidian were unsuccessful.

Transposing fingerprints isn’t an everyday mistake, but it’s not uncommon, said Todd Matthews, director of case management and communications for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System.

“There have been other times where prints were flipped,” Matthews said, although he didn’t have statistics on the frequency.

In fact, the officer who made the catch in Langley’s case said he’s caught himself making the same mistake.

“It’s something that happens every so often,” said Dollinger, a forensic specialist analyst with state police’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System. “It’s just something you have to be careful about.”

After discovering the error, Dollinger, who has 20 years of experience, resubmitted the prints through the state and national identification systems and turned up Langley’s name.

“It was kind of a quiet satisfaction,” Dollinger said. “It was a good thing because we know who the fellow is. The family can get some closure.”

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