Abstract

In recent year’s biometrics have started to make a major positive impact in our nation’s police departments. Biometrics is a technology that can make police departments safer, more effective and more efficient by saving time and money. Biometrics uses a person’s biological markers such as fingerprints, palm prints, facial features, and iris information for various uses. This paper will discuss how biometrics is applied to police technology such as smart guns, iris scanners, fingerprint scanners, and facial recognition systems. This document hopes to provide police departments with enough information to make an informed decision on bringing biometric technology into their units. This document will also touch on amendment rights pertaining to biometric technology in order to make departments aware of how this technology pertains to a citizen’s civil rights. Biometrics is rapidly advancing in our society and police departments need to be aware of how beneficial this technology really is.

Biometrics: How Are Police Departments Utilizing This Technology?
Biometrics is defined as using inherent human characteristics as a form of identification and access control. There are more than six billion people on our planet and each one can be identified as different by their biometric characteristics (Baker, 2011). With that many people out there police officers now more than ever need a quick and accurate way to identify suspects when working the field. The way they are accomplishing this task is by using mobile biometric identifying devices such as fingerprint scanners, iris scanners, and facial recognition devices. Between the years 2000 and 2009, 584 officers were feloniously killed in the field, 82 percent of the people involved in those officers deaths had at least one past criminal arrest or a current warrant out for their arrest (Wolfhope, 2011). If those officers had a better way to identify the people they were dealing with such as biometric technology their lives may not have been lost. Smartphones are on the cutting edge of mobile biometric technology offering apps that have facial recognition software as well as iris scanners. Officers also need a way to keep themselves safe when dealing with dangerous suspects, one way they could stay safe is by using smart gun technology. Smart guns use biometric hand characteristics to allow only the registered owner to operate them. Smart gun technology could save an officer’s life, if a criminal was to somehow obtain control of the officer’s gun. With all technology that deals with identifying civilians there is always the issue of Amendments rights, police department management should aware of this issue and prepared for it. Police departments are utilizing biometric technology in order to be more efficient, safer, and more informed in the field.

Smart Guns
Smart Guns have the potential to be very useful to a police department by protecting officers and their families. As of now smart guns are not yet being used by any police departments but could be in the very near future. If an officer’s gun was to fall into the wrong hands such as a child or criminal biometric smart gun technology could prevent a disaster from happening. A smart guns main goal is to only let the weapon be fired by the guns registered owner. According to an article on ScienceNetLinks.com the gun would operate on a system of dynamic biometrics, which measures changes over time. The way a person grips a gun and all the changes in pressure as a person squeezes a trigger create a pattern that’s unique to each individual (ScienceNetLinks.com). That pattern is very consistent in each individual, which allows the gun to be accurate to the point that it can tell if the owner is tired or wearing gloves and still operate correctly. So the chance that another person would be able to fire the weapon is very small. A smart gun built on this platform has been given a 90% success rate which is good but not perfect, and in order to be used by police departments across the nation the success rate would need to be 100%. Some gun owners say this technology is unnecessary, but I believe they are very wrong. I can think of two instances in the past year where this technology could have easily saved lives. The first is of a teenage boy in New Mexico that murdered his entire family with his father’s guns. If these weapons were smart guns the teenager would have never been able to fire them and kill his parents along with his three siblings. The second instance took place on December 28, 2012 at a police department in New Jersey where a 39-year old man who was in custody, attacked a female officer, stole her gun and shot three other officers. Both of these instances could have been possibly avoided if smart gun technology would have been in place.
Iris Scanners
Iris Scanning is a new way for police to be able to identify suspects quickly and accurately in the field using biometrics. An article in the Wall Street Journal explains how iris scanners operate, “Here’s how it works: To scan a person’s iris, police officers can hold the special iris-scanning camera on device, called MORIS, about 5 to 6 inches away from an individual’s irises. After snapping a high resolution photo, the MORIS system analyzes 235 unique features in each iris and uses an algorithm to match that person with their identity if they are in the database” (Steel, 2011). MORIS stands for Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System and it is one of the main hardware and software technologies that police are using to scan peoples irises. The iris is the colored ring around the eye that is developed in the womb after conception. No two people have the same iris, even twins. Irises do not deteriorate over time like skin or bones the iris that a person is born with is the same one that they will die with. Irises are easier to work with then retinas because they are more forward on the eyeball. It is much more difficult to scan a person’s retina then it is to scan a person’s iris for this reason. Iris scanning is safer then fingerprinting because it allows a suspect to remain in handcuffs while an officer scans their iris and searches for their identity. Iris scanning is safe and accurate way police are utilizing cutting edge biometric technology in the field.

Facial Recognition Technology
Facial Recognition Technology is another way for police officers to find out the identity of suspects using biometrics while working in the field. Facial recognition works by taking pictures of suspects uploaded by police and comparing them with pictures of that person that have already been previously put into a database. Officers just need to take a digital photo of a suspect and upload into the system. Not only does facial recognition work with pictures that are taken by still camera, but it also works with images captured by video camera. One of the leading companies developing this technology is the FaceFirst Corporation. They claim to be able to do 4 million facial comparisons in a single second per computer using their live video feeds (RT.com, 2012). FaceFirst also says they can positively identify a suspect up to 100 feet away. Facial recognition technology at this point is not as accurate as fingerprinting, but developers are working hard to make improvements on a daily basis. This technology is very useful to police departments when it comes to finding and tracking wanted persons, terrorists, and missing persons. Facials recognition secures another method to help police quickly identify suspects.

Fingerprint Scanners
Fingerprint scanners have become mobile and are helping police to identify who is a friend and who is a foe. Mobile fingerprint scanners are about the size of a cellular phone and weigh about the same. How they operate is by police first obtaining a suspects fingerprint on the scanner electronically and then using the wireless internet they relay the information to the AFIS database in order to look for a match. The system is very fast and a match can usually be found in about two minutes, whereas before the process could have taken up to a couple of hours. This technology saves police a lot of time in the field when trying to identify a suspect. The old way of identifying suspects in the field was asking a suspect for their information and then sending that information to a dispatcher to verify or an officer would input the information on there their MDC’s and research it themselves. Many times a suspect would give an officer bad information making the process longer than it should be. With mobile fingerprint scanners there is no information to be asked all the officer has to do is scan the suspect’s finger and the information will be transfer to the officer in minutes. This technology is successful and spreading fast, for example in California Los Angeles County already has about 2,000 devices and will soon be ordering about 2,000 more (Norton, 2009). Fingerprint scanners are a must for every police department because they cut out all the confusion when dealing with suspects who like to lie and get straight to the point of figuring out who is who.

Smartphone Biometrics
Smartphone biometrics takes a technology that police already use on a daily basis and put it to even more police oriented uses. Police officer’s smartphones can now scan irises, recognize faces, and scan fingerprints in order to identify suspects. In order to start identifying suspects all an officer has to do is simply take out his smartphone and launch the application. In order to cut down on the amount of equipment an officer must carry smart phones combine three pieces of equipment into one. A smartphone is able to accomplish this triple threat of identity tasks just by installing one small piece of electronic equipment to the back of the phone. Officers can now identify suspects three different ways with one piece of equipment, making the chance for a mistaken identity slim to none. Police will not have to fumble through three different pieces of equipment one piece of small equipment will get the job done cutting down on time and police officers having to memorize instructions for multiple pieces of technology. Right now companies are making this technology compatible with Android and IOS operating systems since those two operating systems are the most widely used on smartphones. I recommend this budget friendly technology to all police departments that are looking to become more efficient and more effective.
Privacy Concerns
What most constitutional rights advocates are concerned with regarding this type of technology is that police are going to use it as a surveillance tool in order to collect the biometric information of innocent people (Howard, 2011). People getting their faces scanned by police surveillance video cameras without them knowing it is a major privacy concern. Police scanning random people’s irises and fingerprints is what should be avoided. There needs to be some type of probable cause established before police are able to take someone’s biometric information. In order for police departments to avoid privacy issue lawsuits officers should always use proper procedures when taking a person’s biometric information as well as establish probable cause. This new technology is still a gray area for the court systems so for now police should operate on the safe side of things until specific laws are passed. Biometric technology is a great leap forward for police in the areas of finding out a person’s true identity and making the police officer job as safe as possible. Biometrics is making police officers more efficient by cutting down the time it takes to identify a suspect by 90%. Mobile biometrics is helping to ensure officers safety by enabling them to find out exactly who they are dealing with right there on the spot in a matter of mere minutes. Biometric gun control has the potential to save thousands of lives each year once it is perfected. All these reasons are why biometrics is quickly pushing itself to the forefront of police technology. Biometrics will save lives, reduce costs, and increase effectiveness and this is why it should be in every police department across the globe.

Works Cited Baker, T. J. (2011, April). Biometrics for Intelligence-Led Policing: The Coming Trends. The Police Chief 78, 38-45. Retrieved from http://www.policechiefmagazine.org
Hirshon, B. Smart Gun. ScienceNetLinks.com. Retrieved from http://www.sciencenetlinks.com
Howard, Z. (2011, July 20). Police to begin iPhone iris scans amid privacy concerns. Reuters. Retrieved from http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/20/us-crime-identification-iris-idUSTRE76J4A120110720
Norton, L. M. (2009, June). Who Goes There? Mobile Fingerprint Readers in Los Angeles County. The Police Chief 78. Retrieved from http://www.policechiefmagazine.org
Rt.com. (2012). California FaceFirst Surveillance Recognition. Rt.com. Retrieved from http://rt.com/usa/news/california-facefirst-surveillance-recognition-908/ Steel, E. (2011, July 13). How a New Police Tool for Face Recognition Works. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://blogs.wsj.com/
Wolfhope, P. (2011, September). Mobile Biometric Devices: What the Future Holds. The Police Chief 78, 38–40. Retrieved from http://www.policechiefmagazine.org