Forensics | Latent Fingerprint Section

The Latent Print Section is comprised of commissioned law enforcement officers, as latent examiners, and civilian employees in clerical positions. They are responsible for the evaluation and ultimate comparison of all fingerprints, palm prints, footprints, shoe impressions, and tire impression evidence collected by members of the Crime Scene Section. Members of this Section also serve as expert witnesses in judicial proceedings. As a service to the upstate South Carolina law enforcement community, we offer these same evaluation, comparison, and expert testimony services.

This Section maintains a master fingerprint card hardcopy file of over 200,000 different individuals fingerprinted for criminal charges and certain civil applications at the Greenville County Law Enforcement Center. These fingerprint cards are used as comparison standards for the Section. Since November of 2005, the Latent Print Section has been receiving electronic images of all fingerprint cards for storage and retrieval. The Latent Print Section also maintains an AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) workstation, which is networked to the main AFIS database at SLED (South Carolina Law Enforcement Division) and the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation). This allows our agency the ability to search their entire SLED statewide fingerprint database and the FBI database. AFIS case searches may take from a few minutes to a matter of hours depending on the database searched. Once the AFIS results have been returned, a trained fingerprint examiner must determine whether the returned fingerprints in the database match the unknown print searched.

Three full time latent print examiners, one full time and one part time clerk currently staff the Latent Section.

Contact Information

Department of Public Safety
Latent Print Section
20 McGee Street
Greenville, SC 29601

Main Telephone:

864-467-5131

Fax:

864-467-5130