New Fingerprint Tool Pointing Barnstable County Sheriff’s Office in the Right Direction

The Barnstable County Sheriff’s regional Bureau of Criminal Investigation has been using an upgraded fingerprinting system for the past month and the results have been roughly three times better than the old equipment.

“When you’re fighting crime, you can do it best from the leading edge,” said Barnstable County Sheriff James M. Cummings about the Morpho Biometric Identification System provided by MorphoTrak, the county's new Automatic Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS.

The MorphoBIS allows users to search a recovered latent print through a database in a specific area, narrowing down the 1.4 million people from Massachusetts in the system, according to Sheriff Cummings' office.

Most of the suspects identified using the new equipment in Barnstable have been wanted for breaking and entering cases. A serial arsonist, who burnt down four Hyannis homes, was also identified using the MorphoBIS.