By Rob Ginter - Staff Writer
MOREHEAD
MARCH 5 — The Rowan County Detention Center has new fingerprint technology and was selected by the state to be a central training location for other jails in the area also receiving the technology. Seventeen jail employees from Rowan, Carter and Mason County were at the RCDC for the training last Thursday.
“The Kentucky State police received a grant and started replacing the finger print scanners,” Jim Kessler of Morphotrak Corporation said. “They went out to the counties that were doing the better job at capturing finger prints.
“It’s newer technology, this real time and after they capture the finger prints they’re electronically transmitted to Kentucky State Police’s Automated Fingerprinting Identification System section, which is at (KSP) post 12 in Frankfort. They’re automatically searched through the Kentucky state database to see if they’ve previously identified the individual. It provides the holding jail with the KSP ID number (the SID).”
According to Kessler, after that the live scan searches an unsolved crime database and at the same time does an electronic search of the FBI database. The live scan then sends messages back from the FBI to the Kentucky AFIS headquarters as a result of that search.
According to Kessler, this type of scanning helped solve 12 homicides in the Kentucky in 2009.
“I’m just glad we can cooperate with the state police and the support they give us as far as giving us the equipment to do our job with,” Jailer Don Hall said. “I think it’s very important that we do the finger prints, it’s just another tool to keep our community safe.”
The RCDC was one of 31 jails in the state to receive the new technology.
