In 1973, most #fingerprint examiners were police officers. In Texas where I lived, a two-week class at Texas DPS Academy was deemed sufficient to perform all the duties of #LatentPrintExaminer. I was processing crime scenes in late 1973 and was sent to the class in 1977. That got me promoted to Detective and put in charge of the fingerprint files, the darkroom, and all major crime scenes. I began testifying to fingerprint identifications in 1978 with only that one class, no on the job training, and nobody to mentor me.
How times have changed! Back then, most fingerprint people were males, most were police officers, college degrees were rare (I was selected for the class and promotion because I was the only cop in the department with a BS), nobody took examination notes, and #CriminalDefenseAttorneys almost never mounted a serious challenge to #FingerprintEvidence, at least in Texas where I worked at the time. Now, I think women outnumber men, almost all fingerprint examiners are civilians working in accredited labs, most have a bachelor’s degrees or higher, scrupulous notes are a must, and most defense attorneys know how to challenge fingerprint evidence and make you jump through all the hoops.
The IAI Latent Print Certification program was initiated in 1978. I first heard about it and applied in 1980. I tested in 1981 and scored all but one ident. I thought the test was easy, although most who took it thought otherwise. The idea of certification was to set a minimum bar for competency to ensure that a CLPE wasn’t making erroneous identification, not necessarily that he was getting 100% of the idents. Erroneous exclusions were not uncommon – everybody makes them from time to time, and there was no stigma attached to missing a tough ident. In fact, to score 12/15 on the test, some people would make 11 idents and mark the rest “non-ident” knowing that they would collect the 12th correct answer on the one exclusion on the test. They passed.
I was in the business during the big push to civilianization of crime scene and latent print operations. The FBI had publicized the average number of police officers per unit of population. Police administrators realized that by civilianizing functions that did not require arrest powers, they could hire more officers. Most agencies civilianizing the jobs also saw civilianization as a money saving move and paid civilians less, which resulted in lower quality applicants and higher turnover. Some agencies used civilianization to require a higher level of expertise and avoid high turnover. In those agencies, the scientists earn the same or, in some, even more than the sworn police officers. I’ve worked both kinds of places and I far prefer the one who demands excellence and pays a good salary for it.
The profession is on the brink of more change with the coming transition from “positive identification” to likelihood ratios or probabilities. After fifty years in the business, I don’t expect to be around to see this next big change through to fruition. But fifty years from now, I expect somebody reading this post will write something similar about their career observations.