Police Get Tool To Find Missing
The Las Vegas Police Department is the seventh department in the country to implement eye-scan technology that allows for quick enrollment of children in a database and effective identification of missing children using iris data rather than fingerprints. The database is controlled by the Nation’s Missing Children Organization, which means police officers are unable to use the information in a criminal investigation, according to Children’s Identification and Location Database project President and CEO Sean Mullin.
Therefore, parents avoiding adding their children to the database due to privacy concerns should not fear that law enforcement will unjustly use the information. In 2004, Southern Nevada had more than 4,300 reported runaways, so the technology will benefit police departments in the identification of runaways picked up by police of social services, according to Las Vegas Sheriff Bill Young.
Mullin asserts that the technology provides identification in seconds rather than in the days or weeks it takes to do so by fingerprint.
Iris scanning also allows for more accurate matches than fingerprints, according to project literature. The technology is eventually expected to authenticate prisoners upon release from Las Vegas’ county jail.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Las Vegas Review-Journal (08/17/05) P. 1B; Geary, Frank .
