Trigger ID instead of fingerprinting

I know from expe­ri­ence latent prints on firearm trig­gers is a long­shot. It’s bet­ter with smoother trig­gers, but then many trig­gers now days are poly­mer and have fric­tion grooves cut into them. Making latent prints more difficult.

The fric­tion grooves make DNA analy­sis a bet­ter choice. The prob­lem is the extra back­log it can cre­ate in the crime­lab. Does the DNA sec­tion have to work the firearm to col­lect the cel­lu­lar mate­r­ial? Or does the firearms sec­tion have to learn to col­lect DNA on EVERY firearm sub­mit­ted — just in case?

Enter this new prod­uct which makes the col­lec­tion of cel­lu­lar mate­r­ial from firearm fric­tion sur­faces (trig­gers, grips, safeties, slide releases, mag­a­zine releases etc.) field expe­di­ent. A great idea, and I wish they had this at labs I used to work for.

Originally posted here:

Where Fingerprinting Fails, There’s Trigger ID

By Darren McRoy

Trying to extract iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from a crime-scene gun is a tricky prospect. Fingerprints, for instance, can be of mar­ginal qual­ity and tricky to iden­tify. Now Forensic ID, an Indianapolis-based com­pany, hopes to rev­o­lu­tion­ize gun-crime iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (and ulti­mately, pre­ven­tion) with Trigger ID, a new DNA col­lec­tion pro­gram cur­rently in use by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD). Designed for street offi­cer use, Trigger ID aims to cir­cum­vent sev­eral cur­rent prob­lems in col­lect­ing iden­ti­fi­ca­tion from firearms.

Trigger ID col­lects from “touch DNA”—samples as small as 150 cells left behind when a per­son grips a weapon. Crucially, Trigger ID does not require the col­lec­tor to dry the sam­ple, due to its SIM buffer solu­tion: a pro­pri­etary solu­tion con­tain­ing antimi­cro­bials and a DNA preser­v­a­tive. This removes the need for des­ic­cants or air-dryers, and facil­i­tates col­lec­tion for the first offi­cers at the scene, which can pro­vide a fresher sam­ple of cells.

“Due to the fact that it’s so easy to use, and you don’t have to dry the swab, it’s very sim­ple for a police offi­cer to col­lect DNA at the scene, rather than call­ing an evi­dence tech and wait­ing for them to show up, or bag­ging the gun and send­ing it off,” said Michael Robbins, CEO of Forensic ID. “Ultimately, this results in increased offender iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, increased con­vic­tions, and increased num­ber of street con­fes­sions and plea bar­gains, thus sav­ing the city a great deal of money as well.”

The Trigger ID kit (which dou­bles as an evi­dence bag) is part of an over­all gun-crime-reduction pro­gram, involv­ing train­ing, press releases, and gen­eral pub­lic­ity about the use of the new foren­sic tool. These mea­sures are intended as a warn­ing to poten­tial gun-criminals. “We want to show the city that we have the capa­bil­ity of imple­ment­ing [the pro­gram],” said Vincent Perez, Vice President of Forensic ID. “Bad guys talk to each other. People [in Indianapolis] are start­ing to real­ize that we’re going to catch them.”

Since being imple­mented with the IMPD last August, Robbins said, Trigger ID has iden­ti­fied offend­ers in 54% of gun cases, as opposed to 5–7% when using fin­ger­print­ing. The suc­cess of the pro­gram has led to a sec­ond sim­i­lar prod­uct being devel­oped, 1^st Responder, intended for col­lect­ing touch DNA from bur­glary cases. In addi­tion, the Trigger ID pro­gram expanded into its sec­ond city, Cleveland, in July.

Forensic ID is even talk­ing to the Department of Defense about using their touch-DNA pro­grams in war zones to pro­file enemy com­bat­ants. But the Trigger ID pro­gram is scal­able to the needs of indi­vid­ual police depart­ments of any size, said Perez. “We really do try to give peo­ple the most bang for their buck. If a city comes to us with a cer­tain amount of money and tells us ‘this is what we have to spend’, we will try to fit a pro­gram to them.”

Perez added that touch DNA can give a 100% accu­rate iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of an offender. “DNA is almost infal­li­ble, and that’s because it’s not inter­pre­tive [like] fin­ger­print­ing or hand­writ­ing analy­sis,” he said. “DNA is the fin­ger of God point­ing at the person.”