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Rangefinder
Magazine Orange County Sheriffs Department by Kim Brady
So, why start with film when you can start with digital? It’s the next logical step. We’ve already seen the benefits of converting inkpad fingerprinting to a sophisticated system of digitized data—comput-erized databases that help police track down felons and murderers across continents. Imagine the benefits of maintaining a comprehensive database of crime scene information that could link visual clues from one precinct to the next, saving valuable investigation time—not to mention film and processing costs.
The Orange County Sheriff’s Department, headquartered in Santa Ana, California, is among the first police departments to take that logical technological leap in crime fighting, by bringing digital imaging to the streets—in a big way—with the purchase of 26 Fujifilm FinePix S2 Pro digital cameras. The project is being led by Joe Heppler, head forensic specialist with the Orange County Sheriff-Coroner’s Department. Heppler has been driving the transition from analog to digital in law enforcement since the early 1990s, when he worked with noted digital photography expert, George Reis at the Newport Beach, California Police Department, and helped to initiate one of the first digital fingerprint scanning systems. “ I was a Newport Beach detective and Reis was in charge of the photo lab,” said Heppler. “He and I worked together on that project and eventually started our own consulting business, Imaging Forensics. Now we train forensic photographers and lab technicians at law enforcement agen-cies throughout the United States, primarily in fingerprint applications. Gradually, we’re finding that police departments are getting ready to upgrade to digital capture at the crime scene.”
Why has it taken so long? For the same reasons that other major institutions have delayed the transition from film to digital. “A lot of government agencies planned to go digital during the 1990’s,” said Heppler. “But they discovered that there was a steep learning curve, digital cameras were too ex-pensive to buy in large quantities, and the infrastructure required to store all the digital images was not yet available, at least in a manageable form. “ There was also a problem with data transmission,” he continued. “We didn’t have the high-speed access that we have now, and we couldn’t compress some of our images, like the fingerprint files, because the compression techniques would be challenged in court.” As digital cameras and equipment have grown cheaper (a trend driven by the home digital market), more and more law enforcement agencies have started to convert to digital. Even so, the transition has been slow. “There are some 14,000 law-enforcement agencies across the country and only a small percentage of those have actually initiated digital technology beyond finger-print analysis. We are fortunate in Southern California, because we have larger police departments and larger budgets, so we can better afford to make a full-scale transition.”
These budgetary resources have enabled Heppler to initiate an unprecedented 18-month transition from film to digital at Orange County—starting with the purchase of 11 FinePix S2 digital cameras last year, which will be followed by 15 more cameras this spring. “Originally, we were going to buy FinePix S1 digital cameras,” said Heppler. “Because that was the latest model available when we submitted our funding proposal. But by the time the funds were granted, the S1 was out of production and the S2 had been released. So we worked out a deal with the vendors to purchase the S2s. “ I was actually glad for the delay, because Fujifilm made some major improvements in the S2,” said Heppler. “The chip has far better color, it has higher-resolution (6.17 megapixels), and it is much more suited to the details we need in fingerprint and tire track photography. There’s also better communication between Speedlight flash units and the S2. We’re getting consistently better light to match what we’ve metered with the camera.
“ There’s still a learning curve, however, our field photographers have been using manual cameras (Nikon FM2s) for years, and they’re not used to automated cameras with all the bells and whistles,” he says. “For example, they’ve always used manual focus to target in on specific bits of evidence, now they’re having to adjust to automatic focus and the many options it offers (i.e.: Single Area AF, Dynamic AF, etc.). They’re also unaccustomed to using program modes, so they not only have to learn how to make it more efficient for them, they also have to learn its limitations and when it’s to their advantage to switch to manual mode.” To reduce the learning curve, Heppler provides an eight-hour training course for crime scene field applications. “These are civilian crime scene photographers that we call in for specific jobs,” says Heppler. “As part of the training process, we take them to a mock-up of a small town that our officers use for tactical training. We call it our “laser village.” There, we set up mock crime scenes and teach them how to use the camera in various crime scene investigations.
“ Our full-time photo lab staff goes through a more extensive two-day training course,” he continues. “They have to learn to use the cameras, because they’ll serve as technical support for the field staff. We also teach them how to download the images, archive them to CD, and how to use the auxiliary equipment, such as film scanners, flatbed scanners and printers. Finally, I take them through two days of Photoshop training.” The Orange County Forensics department’s film-to-digital transition is based on Heppler’s own experience in law enforcement, plus his 11 years of working with computers and digital photography. “I’m using a ‘phase’ process to reach our goal of a 100 percent digital environment,” he says. “We started by establishing an infrastructure. In other words, we had to train the lab staff in how to receive and process images. That phase has been ongoing for the last six months. Now, we’re at the point where we’ve started training the field people. Once that training is complete, and the photographers have had a chance to use digital photography for minor crimes, like burglaries, they’ll start carrying it over to the major crime scenes such as homicides. We’re hoping to reach that stage by summertime. By June I would like the department to be 100 percent digital,” he adds. Heppler has mimicked the lab’s traditional photo system with his new digital setup, by simply replacing the film cassette with the CompactFlash card in the evidence envelope. Once the images are downloaded and processed in the photo lab, they are immediately archived on CD-ROM. “The CD takes the place of the Com-pactFlash card in the photo jacket and is stored as a digital negative,” says Heppler. “Because of costs, our current infrastructure doesn’t allow us to store every image online, so we can only store major crime scene images on our server. When a work request is put in for trial evidence, the CD is removed, or the images taken from online, and either printed as a ‘contact sheet,’ or e-mailed to the D.A. or defense lawyers, depending on what they are capable of receiving.
“ One of the major bottlenecks right now is that many of the court- rooms are not capable of displaying digital images, so we still have to go back to prints,” says Heppler. “Also, many of the D.A.s are reluctant to use digital images in the courtroom because it doesn’t give the jury something tangible to hold onto. They like the fact that the jury can hold a print and look at it in the jury room. Therefore, we’ll still have to produce regular prints for the courtroom until they come up to speed and have the capability to view digital images.” This is still a major improvement over the way the lab has been delivering prints in the past. “Previously, we would have to send stacks of 300 to 500 homicide pictures to seven different agencies,” he says. “Now we just send them each a CD and they pick the images they need. It will be huge cost savings for us, and major time and space savings for them. There’s also a significant environmental benefit. Last year, we printed 150,000 crime scene enlargements and another 100,000 public relations enlargements.”
Currently, the Orange County lab has a Fujifilm Pictrography 4000 printer and a Noritsu minilab for making prints. The Noritsu has a first generation HRCRT attachment, which permits them to print digital files. “It’s extremely slow because of the network interface,” says Heppler. “Plus, you have to sit there and hit ‘print’ for every batch, which makes it very inefficient. We’ll probably replace the Noritsu down the road, or supplement it with a digital minilab system.” Orange County has made a significant investment in its conversion from film to digital, but for the size of the department (the crime lab—including DNA—takes up three floors of an eight-story building), the costs are relative and they’ve been going down, relatively speaking, over the years. “We purchased approximately $100,000 worth of equipment five years ago to implement a digital fingerprint system,” says Heppler. “Then two years ago, we spent approximately $50 to $60,000 to set up a hybrid system for scanning negatives in the photo lab. This latest grant to purchase the cameras was approximately $75,000. ”What has been the response to the new digital capture system? “So far, the reaction from the photographers in the field has been extremely positive,” Heppler says. “They love the S2 and its features, and they really like being able to see the images immediately. It saves them a lot of time in the field, because they no longer have to bracket their shots to make sure they have the best exposure. Now they can take just one shot, look at the LCD on the camera, view the histogram, and they know they have the picture.” Kim Brady is a writer and editor living in Atlanta, Georgia. She is the former editor of Professional Photographer and PEI magazines. Fujifilm FinePix S2 Pro |
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Just take a look at popular primetime television and
you’ll find a proliferation of crime investigation brainteasers—”Law
and Order,” “CSI,” “Crossing Jordan,”—any
number of down-and-dirty police dramas, in which brainy, eccentric lab
technicians use the latest in computer imaging techniques to solve their
cases based on small, obscure pieces of evidences picked from the stomach
contents of their latest victim. It’s digital crime solving at
its finest. Or is it? What about the front end of the investigation?
What kind of tools do we see in the hands of the police photographers?
If we see anything, it’s usually a traditional 35mm SLR or a perhaps
a point-and-shoot digital camera.
