LAPD Investigating Fingerprint Errors

Original arti­cle posted here.

Police Commission chief calls for inves­ti­ga­tion of fin­ger­print lab errors.

Supervisor says prob­lems were not wide­spread. Department is seek­ing money for an inde­pen­dent audit.

By Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 18, 2008

Los Angeles Police Commission President Anthony Pacheco on Friday ordered the panel’s civil­ian watch­dog to inves­ti­gate dis­clo­sures that the LAPD’s fin­ger­print experts have bun­gled cases and impli­cated the wrong peo­ple in crimes.

Pacheco — respond­ing to a story in The Times on Friday — expressed out­rage that top LAPD offi­cials had not informed his five-member board about the extent of the prob­lems in the department’s Latent Print Unit.

“It is of great con­cern to me that I learned of such a crit­i­cally impor­tant mat­ter — one where the defi­cien­cies are not tol­er­a­ble — from the media,” Pacheco said. “This mat­ter should have been pre­sented to us years ago,” he added, not­ing that the prob­lems in the unit dated back at least to 2006.

According to a con­fi­den­tial LAPD report obtained by The Times, two peo­ple had crim­i­nal charges against them dropped because the LAPD’s fin­ger­print print experts erro­neously iden­ti­fied them as sus­pects. The 10-page report said shoddy work and poor over­sight have plagued the fin­ger­print unit and rec­om­mended that inde­pen­dent audi­tors be brought in to deter­mine the scope of the problems.

LAPD offi­cials said they did not know how many other peo­ple might have been wrongly accused over the years as a result of poor fin­ger­print analy­sis and did not have the funds to pay for a com­pre­hen­sive audit to find out.
Pacheco said he was not sat­is­fied with such a response. He said he has directed the LAPD to give the com­mis­sion a full brief­ing on the mat­ter and asked the commission’s inspec­tor gen­eral to con­duct a top-to-bottom review of the unit.

The commission’s pres­i­dent was not the only pub­lic offi­cial who expressed con­cern. Councilman Jack Weiss, who heads the council’s Public Safety Committee, said he planned to hold a hear­ing on the mat­ter. A spokes­woman for the dis­trict attorney’s office said pros­e­cu­tors were review­ing the issue. And the county’s pub­lic defender called for hir­ing an inde­pen­dent auditor.

Assistant Chief Sharon Papa, who is the top com­man­der over­see­ing the LAPD’s sup­port ser­vices, said at a news con­fer­ence Friday that mis­takes were made, but that they were not per­va­sive and pro­ce­dures have since been changed to pre­vent errors.

“This is not a wide­spread prob­lem,” she said.

Papa said the depart­ment had wanted to hire an out­side fin­ger­print con­sul­tant to review the unit’s work but could not get $400,000 to $500,000 from the city to fund the effort. She said LAPD offi­cials are again seek­ing the funds. She acknowl­edged that an inde­pen­dent review was partly needed to bol­ster the cred­i­bil­ity of the department’s fin­ger­print work.

“Any orga­ni­za­tion where you’ve got peo­ple involved, mis­takes get made, work gets sloppy,” Papa said.

She said the depart­ment has put in place a ver­i­fi­ca­tion process involv­ing at least three ana­lysts work­ing independently.

As a result of the prob­lems that were dis­cov­ered, Papa said, one ana­lyst was fired, three oth­ers were sus­pended and a new offi­cial was placed in charge of the unit. Papa said ana­lysts must now also take reg­u­lar exams.

She said the depart­ment has apol­o­gized to the two peo­ple who were wrongly charged.