Police are upgrading technology

Township force remains undermanned VERNON — Since fingerprinting became a standard form of identification in the early 1900s, it’s been done by rolling the fingertips in ink and then stamping the inky fingers onto a card. And that’s still the way they do it at the Vernon Township Police Department - but not for long. The department is about to go live with its brand new LiveScan, an inkless electronic fingerprinting system that digitally captures fingerprints, which can then be transmitted in seconds to a central federal database. By the old system, fingerprints are stamped onto three separate cards. The local card is filed and the other two are mailed to the state police and federal law enforcement, which takes days. A state grant paid for the equipment, which costs between $11,000 and $12,000. “We’re definitely ahead of the curve in Sussex County,” said Vernon Police Chief Roy Wherry. The technology was created by a company called Sagem Morpho, which works with law enforcement and the FBI on biometrics systems like iris and facial recognition scanners. New technology has also streamlined the way the Vernon police handle evidence. In the back of the police station, next to evidence lockers like the ones you’d store your boots in at a ski resort, is another $12,000 piece of technology called The Crime Fighter BEAST. It has made life a bit easier for the spare 32-officer Vernon Police Department. For the last 34 years, officers did handrwitten descriptions of all evidence collected. The evidence would be assigned a unique number, packaged and tagged appropriately, and placed on a shelf in the locked property room. Maybe the evidence went to a forensics lab. Maybe it would go to court. Eventually - unless it was for a homicide or a sexual assault - it would no longer be needed, and it would be returned to the owner, destroyed, or turned over for law enforcement use. “It’s not hard putting stuff in,” said Detective Sergeant Stephen Moran. “It’s researching and getting stuff out that’s the hard part.” Enter The BEAST. Now, new evidence is entered into the computer and tagged with a scannable bar code. A scan of the code brings up the relevant record —specifying what the item is, what case it belongs to, exactly what shelf it’s on, where it was collected and by whom, and also generating a complete history of how the item has been handled since it was brought in. The record can be accessed by the forensics lab, too. The system makes it easy to determine what evidence is current, and where to find the evidence that’s ready to be discarded. “It helps a little,” although with only 32 officers, “we’re still under-manned.” Moran added.