KOAM TV 7 Joplin and Pittsburg News Weather SportsSharing information to fight crime just got easier in southeast Kansas
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By MIKE CORCORAN
OSWEGO, KAN. - A grant worth more then $300,000, encompassing 12 southeast Kansas counties including Labette County will soon give local law enforcement access to high tech equipment making it easier to track down criminals, and it all starts with a thumbprint.
"The benefit of it is if we happen to get a good usable fingerprint of the crime scene we can scan it through our local database and see if we have any common matches on the fingerprint in our local system," says Labette County Sheriff William Blundell.
"The biggest importance to it is it gives us another tool to try and locate people responsible for committing these crimes," Sheriff Blundell continues. "Whether it be a burglary, a theft, a residence or a car or whatever, something that we can utilize as a tool to hold people responsible and keep them in the court system."
"It also allows us, in our 12 county region - we're all linked together, so if I happen to pull a print here in Oswego it will be comparing against the known offenders in the other eleven counties in the region."
The Kansas region stretches as far northeast as Greenwood County and includes all sheriff department's and even police departments in Coffeyville, Independence and Pittsburg.
"It's great tool for us," says Blundell. "What we have done in the past - we pull a print and submit it to the KBI. Unfortunately it takes a while for them to get it compared at times. The way it will be now is when we pull a print we can scan it into our system."
As of December, the system technically became fully operational across the region.
Sheriff Blundell says the next step is getting mobile units in each squad car so that sheriff's deputies can check fingerprints without even having to come back to the station.
Sheriff Blundell says the mobile units should be fully operational by the first of 2010.
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