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At least one police department is concerned the requirement could “re-victimize the victims of crime” and could lead to otherwise solid cases not being prosecuted.

Two New Mexico sheriff’s departments that have been collecting property crime victims’ fingerprints for more than a year say most have been cooperative and that submitting their fingerprints has caused few, if any, problems. However, both agencies said it’s unclear how the policy will affect prosecutions, and one of the agencies said it already has stopped submitting cases in which officers haven’t been able to get victims’ fingerprints.

The lab has two divisions: one in Las Cruces, the other in Santa Fe. Every law enforcement agency in New Mexico, aside from the Albuquerque Police Department and the Bernalillo County Sheriff’s Office – both of which use APD’s lab – submits fingerprint evidence to one of the two divisions for testing and comparison.

In April 2012, agencies that use the Santa Fe lab were alerted to the new fingerprinting requirement, but at that time, the lab didn’t say it would reject cases. Those that use the Las Cruces division weren’t told about the requirement until Friday.

Purcell said in an interview Wednesday that officials’ thinking is that by comparing victims’ prints to unknown prints from, say, an auto burglary, crime lab technicians will be able to eliminate some of the unknown prints from the pool they’ll check against a national database to identify an offender.

Victims’ prints will not be submitted to the national Automated Fingerprint Identification System database, known as AFIS, Purcell said. Nor will victims’ prints be stored in AFIS.

The requirement doesn’t make sense to the Las Cruces Police Department, whose chief is trying to schedule a meeting with Purcell for clarification, said Lt. Kerry Clements.

“There are several possible ramifications of this requirement,” Clements said. “Number one, a victim may feel re-victimized by the police department … I can see why someone would think: ‘I’m the one who got burglarized. Why do you need my prints?’ ”

The requirement also will create more work for Las Cruces officers who respond to property crime calls, he said.

“At a lot of scenes, fingerprints are the only evidence left behind,” Clements said. “They can definitely help solidify a case. There is definitely the potential for cases in which we will not or cannot prosecute if this goes into effect, because some cases will be rejected.”

Purcell said in her teletype and in the interview that she will discuss exceptions to the policy with law enforcement agencies on a case-by-case basis.