Policemen Mobile Phone to Recognize Suspect’s Fingerprints

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Bengaluru police in India will deploy state-of-the-art technology for fingerprint recognition for rapid identification of offenders and criminals. Tenders will soon be floated for the development of a software with which the police can take fingerprints of arrested suspects or criminals on a handheld device. The print will be compared with the existing fingerprint database of criminals. All fingerprints in the police fingerprint bureau have been digitized paving the way for the development of the proposed software.

Police crime and technical services official Bhaskar Rao said that the department was inviting a tender for software which will be installed on the tablets and mobile phones of patrol policemen. If policemen encounter anyone walking suspiciously or they arrest a criminal, they can take their fingerprints digitally on the screen and the image is immediately sent to the central database to see if it matches with any of the criminals nabbed before.

The Bengaluru police had earlier decided to adopt a technology to enhance poor-quality images and match faces with their mug-shot database to identify potential suspects, according to the Economic Times. Later, the department had decided that by installing face-recognition cameras in the city or at public events, it can identify repeated offenders.

In fact, facial-recognition cameras were installed by the police in the Majestic bus station alredy ten years ago, to recognise repeated offenders like chain-snatchers, pickpockets and others. The police used to upload photographs of the offenders and ask them to walk in front of the cameras but the cameras failed to recognise them and alert the police. Hence, the police dropped the face recognition system and are now taking to the fingerprint route where a lot of data already stored can be put to instant use.

Bhaskar Rao added that if other states in India too share their fingerprint databases with the National Fingerprints Bureau, the police can deal with the identification of interstate criminals through the software.