Houston PD Fingerprint Unit

My last blog post seems to have a much “rosier” view on the cur­rent state of the Houston PD crime lab fin­ger­print unit, than the local news­pa­per did here.

A Houston Police Department offi­cial con­firmed Wednesday that a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion is under way into alleged wrong­do­ing at HPD’s fin­ger­print­ing com­par­i­son unit, which is under scrutiny fol­low­ing an audit accus­ing it of shoddy work.

But he said the alle­ga­tions emerged after audi­tors asked employ­ees to do addi­tional work to under­stand why the unit had such a high error rate. More than half of 548 ran­domly selected cases involv­ing fin­ger­prints ana­lyzed at the unit have turned up irreg­u­lar­i­ties. Officials released details of the audit on Tuesday.

A fifty per­cent “irreg­u­lar­ity” rate is pretty unacceptable.

Two other employ­ees in the fin­ger­print unit are not accused of crim­i­nal wrong­do­ing but were put on leave as part of the inves­ti­ga­tion. A third part-time employee resigned under pres­sure from the depart­ment, Oettmeier said.

Consultants are tem­porar­ily doing their jobs while offi­cials decide how to train new fin­ger­print ana­lysts or hire outsiders.

An attor­ney with the Houston Police Officers’ Union, Bob Armbruster, said the union would rep­re­sent the three offi­cers on leave, but he said he didn’t have enough infor­ma­tion to comment.

The audit has also prompted a range of reac­tions from local offi­cials, rang­ing from anguish to sat­is­fac­tion that the Police Department vol­un­tar­ily dis­closed its problems.

It has also spawned renewed dis­cus­sion about the need for an inde­pen­dent cen­ter to ana­lyze foren­sic work, pos­si­bly includ­ing fingerprints.

Much foren­sic evi­dence across the coun­try, such as fin­ger­prints or DNA, is ana­lyzed by labs closely tied to law enforce­ment despite the inher­ent con­flicts of inter­est, said UCLA law pro­fes­sor Jennifer Mnookin.

What do you think? Is this another exam­ple of why labs shouldn’t be part of police/law enforce­ment agen­cies, and should be staffed by trained sci­en­tists, and not police officers?