FLAGLER COUNTY, Fla. – Flagler County Sheriff’s Office CSI Supervisor Paulo Santos called it a “game-changer” – a new fingerprint machine that can pick up prints in a fraction of the time and record a 4K image to send around to state and national databases to catch more bad guys faster.

“It’s a full-spectrum imaging system which means it goes through spectrums of light that we can’t see with the naked eye,” Santos said. “It helps highlight gunshot residue, biological fluids and latent prints that we can’t see.”

The sheriff’s office purchased a lab-based imaging system and a mobile imaging system. The system in the lab allows CSI techs to bring back potential evidence from a crime scene for closer inspection. The mobile version allows techs to see if prints are present at a crime scene.

“Previously it was everyone going by hand using powder or magnetic powder,” Santos said. “Going over surfaces and hoping something was there. This kind of shows if we’re going to waste our time processing, if it’s there or not.”

The challenge for CSI has always been capturing the fingerprint with enough quality to compare it to known samples and at the same time trying to obtain DNA from the print.

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The old way of capturing prints meant dusting them with a powder chemical that made them photographable. But the chemical would also destroy or contaminate DNA on or in the print.

“[Now] after we take a photo of the item of evidence, if needs to be swabbed after [to collect DNA] it shouldn’t be an issue,” Santos said.

Sheriff Rick Staly was proud to purchase the $135,000 system with drug forfeiture funds.

“We have to stay at least equal [to the bad buys] and hopefully ahead of their ability on technology,” Staly said. “This is one of the tools that we’ve been able to do that with.”

Staly said the system saves time and money. CSI techs can process a scene faster and more accurately with the mobile imaging system instead of trying to scan the room with UV light. And they can turn a crime scene back over to an owner faster instead of keeping it preserved for processing.

Santos said the sheriff’s office purchased the system in October and already has used it several times to locate and identify fingerprints they might never have found in the past.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, it’s impressive,” Santos said. “Anything that someone leaves behind, this is going to catch that and this is going to ensure that they will be found by us, somehow, some way, if not instantly then in the future.”

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