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Terry A. Smith
| | Posted on Tuesday, May 27, 2003 - 11:38 am: | 
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Sal,
Yes, exposure to excessive heat is detrimental to the fingerprint. As prints are primarily composed of water, much of any print left by your burglar may, in fact, have evaporated. Trouble is, there is no way of really knowing this without conducting the examination. Plus, examiners can recover what's left of the fingerprint after the water is gone, again depending on the situation. So, you may be correct in assuming the cops fed you a line of bull.
BUT please read on....
The officer investigating your break and enter has to make a judgement call as to whether or not he should call in a specialist to examine for fingerprints. Not all front-line officers have a good understanding of fingerprint development. Your investigator may fit this category, he/she may truly have believed what they were saying, and it could be no fault of theirs. The officers training and experience is a factor in addition to what I call police "internal pressures" which may be things like how much over budget the agency is, stress resulting from some other incident recently attended, or even interpersonal relationships with his/her patrol Sergeant. Heck, maybe the last time this officer called for expert assistance, he had his knuckles rapped, so now he's tentative to make another request.
Whoever was in your Grandmother's house will likely continue with crime, and will likely be caught at some point. In the mean time, take some time to add a bit more security to her place, extra lighting maybe, trim some shrubbery, stronger locks, and let her neighbours know what has happened so they can increase their own security and attention level. |
Sal
| | Posted on Monday, May 26, 2003 - 07:16 pm: |
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My grandmother's house was recently robbed, and the police said they would not be able to get fingerprints because of the heat. My family said that was bull and the cops just said that to leave. So is it true guys? |
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