20100915 Justin Coslor -- Fingerprints On The Squad Car

When a policeman on a freeway or highway or turnpike or other road pulls 
over an automobile driver, they sometimes ask the driver and passengers to 
exit their vehicle and to place their hands on the hood of the police car 
while the officer pads them down looking for weapons and contraband. The 
police car hood can then be dusted for fingerprints or hand prints and 
scanned into the computer system to pattern match them to the forensic 
database to figure out who the fingerprints belong to. That way even if 
the suspects flee the scene and escape, the officer can still figure out 
who they are by their fingerprints, so that they can alert the rest of the 
police officers about the situation and have a better chance of 
apprehending the suspects. Perhaps fingerprints could also be lifted from 
the suspect's drivers license when the officer takes the license back to 
his squad car to look up the license and plates and vehicle registration. 
A DNA profile could also be collected from the fingerprints and the 
computer could draw a picture of what that person approximately looks 
like. It could all be automated for quick and accurate processing. After 
processing, the fingerprints could then be wiped clean off the squad car 
with a soft cloth, so that the officer has a fresh fingerprint collection 
surface on the hood of the squad car before they leave the scene. For 
cross-examination, perhaps a DNA sample could be analyzed to know what the
fingerprints of the person would look like, in addition to 
predicting a general physical profile.