Police officers across the country will be able to check an individual’s identity on the street within two minutes, as new mobile fingerprinting devices are up and running.
The new Mobile Identification (MobileID) service allows police officers to scan a person’s fingerprints while on the beat and check them against information from the national fingerprint database, IDENT1 for verification. The database holds prints from people who have been convicted or who are involved in police investigations.
This will say police enable faster identification of individuals saving the public and police time and also help increase the number of offenders who are identified and brought to justice.
All they need to do is place a finger on the screen reader and wait to see if it matches against a print already held on the database. Operational officers report that many people stopped for moving traffic offences offer false details initially. The device has been in use in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire for the last four weeks but it is officially launched across the country on July 19.
The small handheld device, a BlueCheck, which is used with a standard Blackberry, means that officers who suspect someone is lying about their true identity, do not have to bring the person all the way back to a police station to check them. And by the same token, honest members of the public can go on their way within a few minutes – saving their time and that of the officers. Fingerprints captured by the machine at the roadside are not stored on any database.
MobileID is currently being used mostly by specialist units such as the Roads Policing Unit and are a step up from the Lantern project devices which Bedfordshire Police was one of the first to trial about five years ago.
