David Fairhurst - Fingerprint Officer - A day in the life - Careers - Surrey Police

Profile: David Fairhurst - Fingerprint Officer

In very basic terms, the aim of my job is to find the owner of the prints taken from a crime scene. Sounds obvious, yes, but we're not simply helping the officers in charge of the case find a culprit. We're involved in a sometimes very complex examination process. The importance of fingerprint evidence can never be underestimated as people can be freed, cleared or convicted on this evidence alone, and at times it's the only evidence to go on.

A typical day can start by collecting the SOCO's (Scene of Crime Officer) report, which contains the fingerprint lifts taken from the crime scene. We use the CIS (Crime Information System) and our own scientific support system for the details of the crime and case. There are currently 80-90,000 people already in the Surrey files against which we can cross-check, while NAFIS (the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System) offers a database of nearly six million prints.

When there's nothing else to go on NAFIS will find the closest matches. Loading prints into NAFIS is a trained exercise, it's not as simple as scanning an image and getting the machine do the rest, as the movies can often make you believe.

Even the search results are examined physically with the eye. If positive, they're checked again by another officer before being passed to the forensics intelligence team. Finally, the results go to the officer in charge of the case for an arrest decision (if appropriate).

At this stage of the proceedings, a fingerprint officer will only become involved again if a suspect pleads not guilty and the case goes to trial - we will be expected to give a written statement and appear as a witness.

As technology advances the time taken to get a fingerprint to us and to do the search is getting much quicker. Livescan will transmit digital images of the fingerprints from the police station direct to our computer, which will perform a search and get the result back to the police station while the suspect is still in custody.

From time to time we are involved in less regular duties. We may be asked to attend a crime scene to work with a SOCO, for instance. It's also within our boundary to maintain the Surrey fingerprint collection, check the support team's initial work on a case, and to update the national records.

All the work we do requires a number of years' training - three in total, covering analysis, identification, history, science, chemicals and witness training. It is on-the-job training, but absolutely everything is checked in the initial period. Ultimately, the identification of fingerprints is a powerful tool for the police (as recent cases have proved) that can impact hugely on peoples' lives, in that it alone can vindicate the innocent and implicate the guilty.