Police resurrect science of fingerprinting
They’ve been used by police departments in England for over a century…but in Belize the science of fingerprinting has always taken a back seat to more easily obtained evidence like a suspect’s confession. But with defendants clamming up and witnesses too scared to testify, good old fashioned forensic science is about to make a comeback.
Janelle Chanona, Reporting
There is no such thing as the perfect crime because when perpetrators escape justice, it is the forensic expert that has failed. That is the message Panamanian criminologists are teaching local law enforcement officials as part of a forensic investigation training course.
According to instructors, the course skills being taught will fill a huge gap in crime fighting in Belize: the lack of forensic field technicians.
Trained by the Federal Investigation Bureau in the United States and through the efforts of the United States Embassy in Belize, the Panamanian experts have come to Belize to focus on fingerprinting.
Pedro Alvardo, Crime Scene Inspection Expert
“They will have the capacity to pick up a print from the scene and give it a proper name and be able to tell you who the print it belongs to.”
“What they have and what we are going to give them is going to be a one hundred percent change orientated. We are assuring you that after this training it will be left up to the national authorities to ensure that this course continues on its course and that what is in each plan right there is multiplied in experience and knowledge they will be receiving.”
Twenty five civilian members of the Belize Police Department and eight field officers are participating the three month course. Along with the theory, they will spend time in the field at actual crime scenes to test their knowledge.
According to Commandant of the Police Training Academy, Assistant Superintendent Elodio Aragon Junior, this basic course, combined with advanced training of select members of the group will give police officers more credibility in the witness box.
Elodio Aragon Jr., Commandant, Police Training Academy
“We want to go to court and be able to be viewed as experts in that field. Whether it be fingerprinting, whether it be dealing with serology, dealing with collection of DNA ETC. We want to be able to stand up in court unquestionable when it comes to people who question their expertise in court.”
“These people are forming the forensic unit of the Police Department and they are being trained for that specific purpose. It will be a civilianized unit and their sole job is to recover evidence from crime scenes.”
Carlos Mencias, Head of Scenes of Crime Unit
“We have a problem in the past whereby we find that the witnesses are being intimidated and they tend to not want to come forward. What we have found out is that when you come right down to it is that in each crime scene, you have traces; definitely you have traces at a crime scene. It’s up to us and this training is up to us how we can recover; how we can analyse it and how we can get the criminals without much assistance from otherwise, except the science behind it.”
Martin Rodriguez, CIB, Scenes of Crime Unit
“I hope to learn some more. From my learning I am hoping that I will be able to pass it on to other people in the fields so that it would enable us to do our searches better and get better results from the people out there and get better results in the court, finally.”
Even though police regularly fingerprint detainees, the hope is that the inclusion of such evidence to ensure conviction of guilty parties will become the norm. According to Corporal Osmond Mortis, attached to the Police Information Technology Unit, thousands of prints are already in the department=s database.
Corporal Osmond Mortis
“The AFIX tracker is a tool used by the Police Department to help in the conviction of accused persons who leave fingerprints behind at a scene. Burglars who commits burglary at a scene, basically leaves behind their fingerprint. The fingerprint is entered into the AFIX tracker and the machine automatically does a search and it comes up with a match and that match is taken to court to get a conviction¡Xwell exactly just to put that person at that scene at a particular time.”
At the end of this course, the scenes of crime technicians will be able to access the information in the finger printing identification system from formations throughout the country.
The three forensic experts in Belize are instructors from the Technical and Judicial Police of Panama. The forensic investigation training is joint effort by the United States, Panama and Belize.
