Posted by D.N.Rijpkema on November 27, 1999 at 04:39:53:
My name is Doede Rijpkema. I'm a police-sergeant in the city of Amsterdam and working as a latent-examiner for 23 years now.
On my own behalf I would like to give some comment on the Scottish Problem Ident. To my opinion this failure has nothing to do with expertise. This is more a matter of stupidity.
The quality of the mark is poor. With some fantasy there could be enough points for an identification, but you may just as well discover there are not, when you compare it with the right person.
Anyway, I would have kept the mark and prayed that they would never send me a list with a hundred suspects.
When I look at the charts, the position of the mark is not natural to my opinion. I think the "scan of police crime scene photo of the latent print" gives the right position of the mark.
I think the identification-decision was primarily based on the points 3,4 and 5 and therefore the mark had to be turned into this position. Considering the quality of the print, I think he was glad to be rid of it and took a hasty decision, that the mark was identical to this witness, a colleague who rightful visited the crime-scene.
Just guessing of course, but I think they never expected it to appear in court and when it did, they did not have the nerve to tell the truth and went on with it until the end.
That's why I called it a matter of stupidity. I cannot imagine that someone who calls himself a latent print examiner truly believes this to be identical and, even if he's proven wrong, sticks to this conclusion.
One thing that always appears in this kind of cases:
SOLIDARITY or GOOD-FELLOWSHIP. There are always colleagues to back them up, no matter how idiotic some identifications are.
These two words should be banned from the mind of fingerprint-experts. Expertise is a stand-alone situation!
If you are asked for a verification, you evaluate the identification yourself and give a straight opinion, whatever the result may be. This goes together with respect. If you respect each other's expertise, you will never have this kind of problems, even if there is seniority or hierarchy at stake.
Furthermore, this kind of "failures" are always used by those who opposite the "expert-standard". I know this is not an argument, because if the expert fails, there is never an appropriate standard. Nevertheless they bring it up, again and again.