I understand your agravation with LE. Sometimes, things just don't go the way you want them to go. I feel bad when I hear of this type of thing because, well, TM, the truth hurts and noone wants to hear what I'm about to tell you about fingerprint collection and identification. They are a pain in the arse, and rarely lead to anything significant. Now, keep in mind though, I would not have told you that at the scene. I would have told you what is below and maybe an understanding could have been reached in some way. I will say this at the start. Yes, they did you wrong and should have collected the print, I would have. Would it have done any good other than making you feel better? Probably not.
This is just the basics when dealing with prints. Fingerprints are an odd animal in the LE realm. 1) You have to know how to lift them, and although each cop may have a baseline knowledge, and its a perishable skill. 2) it takes a very long time to get the knowledge base on how to lift them properly (chemicals, surfaces, how biological fluid influence the print and the ability to retain said lifted print) And, the cop investigating might just be intimidated by having to throw powder and search for "useable" prints. Some of those powders are not enviromentally/person friendly, point blank, they are dangerous. In the past, I've had really good prints I ID'd at a scene but through some snafu the print didn't lift correctly and was ruined. I did take an outstanding close up photo before lifting it and that really saved me in that instance. 3) Each crime scene is diffrent and very rarely are there any "CSI type full distquishable prints" most are smudges (no good) and partials (sort of no good). 4) You have to obtain elimination prints from everyone you have ever known who has been in the space (practically) so that they can be compared to the lifted print. That includes palms, and thumrolls, etc etc. 5) The person who left the print, if not in the group of elimination prints has to have been fingerprinted sometime in their lives (juvenilles for one are rarely printed), and those prints have to have been uploaded into AFIS (automated fingerprint identification sysytem) at somepoint by someone for some reason. LE depends on computer added identifcation because the days of Serpico are gone. It's maddening and time consuming (not to say anyone is not worth the effort) and its rare that a fingerprint will prove anything except that at some point the person touched the surface where the print was obtained/collected. Having said all of that who hah. It's better to lift the print as best can be done, then wait for the investigation to provide information pointing to a particualr person. This usually occurrs through interviews, developing leads, eye-witness accounts (if any), pawn shop checks, yada yada yada.
My God man. How do you function?
