Police Use 'Vampire Technology' To Combat Crime
BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- Baltimore City police have enlisted the help of a vampire to help combat crime. Vampire is new technology allowing crime scene technicians to process fingerprints found on a scene in seconds.
Meghan McCorkell has more on how it works.
City police will be among the first in the country to use the technology to instantly process fingerprints.
It's like something you'd see on CSI, but the Vampire Forensic Tactical Device will soon be here in Baltimore.
"It gives us that real time intelligence and real time crime-solving ability," said city crime lab director Steven O'Dell.
The cutting edge device allows crime scene technicians to lift and search fingerprints within seconds.
O'Dell says right now, that takes the lab days.
"Even on a `Hey, let's rush this' sort of turnaround, you're looking at three, four, five days," he said.
The handheld unit gets its name from the two red laser lights that come out of it; they look like a vampire's bite.
The Vampire device is a little bit bigger than a cell phone. The city plans to purchase five of them.
O'Dell says it could help detectives, especially those investigating property crimes. Last year, more than 6,700 burglaries were investigated in the city of Baltimore but there were fewer than 1,000 burglary arrests.
"I think this, combined with some of the other things we've done, just by itself, will probably increase clearance rates by 10%," he said.
Something the mayor and homeowners are hoping for.
"We continue to look every day for ways that we can innovate, ways to use technology to better serve---technology and innovative solutions---to better serve our community," said Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
Technology that could help police crack crimes even quicker.
The city has approved spending $30,000 on the new technology.
The crime lab will put the devices through a number of tests to validate them before using them out on the streets.
