Mercer Island, like many other Eastside cities, is considering entering into an interlocal agreement with King County to receive fingerprint identification systems that would be installed in police cars.
Police say that new Mobile ID devices will improve efficiency and help them identify suspects in the field that may be lying about their names or other information. Remote searches provide an ID response in less than two minutes, giving the officer information to determine whether or not to take a person into custody.
“It’s not something we absolutely have to have. (It’s) something that would be helpful for officers … because in fact, people do lie to us. Some people are intimidated by us, some not at all,” Police Chief Ed Holmes said at the Dec. 1 Council meeting. “The people that come here to do crimes are not intimidated … and will do everything they can to keep from getting arrested.”
The city currently uses a $15,000 County-provided Livescan machine that submits fingerprints to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) computer. The prints are matched against other records as well as “latent” prints collected at crime scenes and forwarded to the Washington State Patrol and FBI for entry into state and national criminal history records.
The $1,150 Mobile ID devices would also be provided by the County, but prints collected by those wouldn’t be stored in AFIS.
Councilmembers are concerned that with recent attitudes regarding police accountability and public trust, this agreement, especially with the Mobile ID devices, would give police a potentially troubling level of power.
“We all want to assume that our police officers will never make mistakes … but they’re human beings just like the rest of us,” said Deputy Mayor Dan Grausz. “You now have this tool in your tool chest where you can go around and start fingerprinting people … It’s going to be a very intimidating process. Every step we take, we need to think there are consequences (for civil liberties).”
The Council agreed that police interactions with citizens need to be further discussed, and scheduled that as a topic for the January planning session. Some feel that the police force has become more “militarized.”
Councilmember Debbie Bertlin said she has confidence in Island officers, but the conversation about police accountability is changing across the country, and on Mercer Island.
Grausz suggested that body cameras would be a better equipment investment than mobile fingerprint scanners.
Holmes said that MIPD has an annual training session on civil rights, and working with and understanding different communities.
“I’m not shy about my strong beliefs in regard to making sure people are treated fairly,” he said.
The Mobile ID infrastructure and devices have been vetted with community members and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), police said.
They were successfully piloted in King County over the past three years, so the AFIS program purchased 250 additional devices for distribution in King County this fall.
Mercer Island would receive two of those devices, though the Council suggested taking three months to study civil liberties before deciding to use them.
