After entering a suspect's identifying characteristics - such as date of birth, sex, race, height, weight and hair color - local law enforcement officers during the "booking" process record an even more revealing trait, fingerprints. When the Jackson County Detention Center opens sometime this spring, fingerprinting will be done digitally with the new Automated Fingerprinting Identification System. "The AFIS is part of the new technology at the detention center," said Jackson County Sheriff Jimmy Ashe, who indicated the system was obtained with grant funds. All county law enforcement agencies will be trained to use the AFIS, which sends fingerprints to the State Bureau of Investigation, which, in turn, forwards the prints to computers at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A suspect's criminal history will then be made available to local authorities, Ashe said. Testing the equipment last week were, from left, Detective Patrick McCoy of the Sheriff's Office and John Buchanan and Tammy Hooper of the Sylva Police Department. - Herald photos by Lisa Majors-Duff
|