Fares Sabawi

San Angelo

Technology has changed everyday life for most people, but advancements are especially critical in law enforcement, where detectives are tasked with determining who is responsible for the heinous crimes they investigate.

Scientific breakthroughs have led to the ability to test for DNA testing, computerized analysis and enhanced surveillance.

But one forensic field — fingerprint technology — is in major need of an upgrade .

"It hasn't really been given the upgrade it deserves," Kleberg County Sheriff Richard Kirkpatrick said. "We're still dealing with a lot of the same methods that have been in existence 75 or 80 years ago."

A team of professors and students at Texas A&M University-Kingsville are working on a way to make big strides in fingerprint technology. The results of the project could change forensics far beyond the jurisdictions of law enforcement agencies in South Texas.

"If this goes as planned, it is going to rewrite how fingerprints are developed across the nation," Kirkpatrick said.

The university's chemistry department submitted a grant proposal to the National Institute of Justice in February, detailing plans to improve on the traditional methods used to lift fingerprints.

"When there's a robbery, we have to use these rudimentary chemicals to try and lift the print," Kirkpatrick said. "It has its limitations."

The surface can't be porous or absorbent. The prints take time to develop, and it is 's difficult for investigators to determine how long they've been there.

"Fingerprints are not easy to collect as people think," Kleberg and Kenedy

County District Attorney John Hubert said. "There's all sorts of environmental factors that come into play."

Professors Louise Liu and Sajid Bashir have developed new detection agents that may be able to change that. Those agents will cause a reaction in fingerprints that can be picked up by a scanner, which will emit green light and electronically capture the print.

The scanner would improve the quality of the fingerprint that's lifted, and help to distinguish between overlapping prints left on a surface.

"It'd be cost effective and time effective," Bashir said. "I personally think this could have a longterm impact and benefit our society."

The developments would help modernize the Kleberg County Sheriff's Office, Kirkpatrick said.

"We know there are scanners that can test fingerprints, but it's only an afterthought," Kirkpatrick said. "That's not aggressively being done in the field."

But the professors' plan doesn't don't stop there. Beyond capturing better-quality fingerprints, the professors plan to go a step further, tying the fingerprint to its owner.

The grant includes plans to develop a database with fingerprints already on file at the Kleberg County Jail. The neural network will use algorithms to compare the prints at a crime scene to the prints in the database and alert detectives if there's a match.

The grant states that through artificial intelligence, the network can "obtain high-fidelity matches even with poor-quality prints."

"The same ideas used for driverless cars can be used to map fingerprints," Bashir said. "It makes investigators' job a lot easier and less subjective."

Hubert is just as interested in the results of the project as the sheriff's office is. The more evidence he can include in his cases, the better.

"It's one of the most important areas of society because it deals with people's life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness," Hubert said. "Anything we can use to expand our evidence gathering at a minimal cost is a great resource."

The professors expect to hear back from the National Institute of Justice in Septemberthis fall. They're optimistic about their chances, and think this project can lead to safer cities across the country..

"Our feeling is we can contribute to the safety of this community," Bashir said. "Because it doesn't matter who you are, we're all connected to our community."