Police in West Valley City, Utah, said they took a fingerprint from a man using the name Marcelo Marquez during a misdemeanor hit-and-run arrest in 2003. Court records show that he pleaded guilty, received a year of probation and was fined about $500.Biometrics are a great way to root out criminal aliases, but only if procedures are in place to run the biometric search.
However, Utah authorities never connected him to his real name or his previous criminal record.
In Utah, fingerprint data is entered into a biometric database for all people booked into jail. But for those who are cited and released, police take a print from a single finger that's kept in state criminal records.
Unless there's a request from an investigator, the print is not run against the biometric database to determine whether the person has a prior record outside Utah or is using an alias, said Alice Moffat, director of the Bureau of Criminal Identification.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Biometrics against criminal aliases
Suspect in deputy deaths arrested in Utah in 2003 (Boston Herald)
