Show FBI s identification division can name anyone of 97 million people through fingerprint cards huge files now hold records of majority of american citizens picture a vast room 10 longer nger and wider than a football field with a vaulted ceiling 75 feet high filled with long rows of s teel steel filing cabinets in this great hall 2500 girls work at calculating machines typewriters and filing cases then visualize separate fingerprint cards the total as this is written in these files and you have some idea of the size of the fingerprint or identification division of the federal bureau of investigation in washington but that all in addition a half dozen other large rooms are filled with hundreds of other girls engaged in classifying incoming fingerprint ger print cards before they are forwarded to the main fingerprint files it is a complex tedious job of huge proportions but so proficient has the FBI become in this identification division so expert has become the classification system that when the sheriff of new madrid county missouri or the chief of police of norman okla or the town marshal at bluffton ind telephones for identification of a given person or sends in fingerprints these officials have an answer within a few minutes for although there are almost miwon million separate cards representing million persons on file classification fi has been reduced to such a science that it is never necessary to remove more than cards for comparison to make positive identification building up this tremendous reservoir of identification cards has become a hobby almost a fetish of the nations boss G man J edgar hoover director of the FBI he foresaw years ago the advantage of the fingerprint system in both criminal identification arid in civilian non criminal investigations both in peace and wartime the system has had a tremendous growth during these five war years bureau expanded by war need for instance on july 1 1941 the bureau had approximately fingerprint records on file but since the war fingerprint records have been coming into the bureau at the rate of about daily impetus has been given through the selective service system and the civil service commission which requires fingerprinting of all employees war workers are all fingerprinted too and copies are sent to the bureau so that during these war years about 77 million prints have been added the job of classifying filing and sorting these millions of separate cards has been a tremendous one first it was necessary to recruit girls from all over the nation these girls had to be above the average w with ith high school or college educations they took the regular FBI oath their habits and lives were thoroughly investigated and even their place of residence in washington picked from a list supplied and approved by the FBI but to get this bureau started to overcome the popular prejudice against being fingerprinted to sell police off officials on the advantages of the fingerprint system in the early days took months and months of educational work by FBI agents traveling throughout the country enlisted help of local police it took painstaking effort on the part of the bureau to build up good will among police officials and public officials everywhere in those early days every agent had orders when passing through a town to pay his respects to the police officials and to pass along a message f from rom J edgar hoover concerning his willingness to help in any local investigation the crux of the message was dont forget to take fingerprints and send them in the identification division is now housed for the duration in the brand new white stone district of columbia national guard armory it occupies the whole building and has constructed new temporary additions to house the cafeteria lounges and locker rooms where it will go after the war is a question criminal identification is indispensable in combating crime and of course is a most potent factor in apprehension of the fugitive from the earliest annals of history personal identification of some character has been in vogue members of one savage tribe were distinguished from others through distinctive attire bodily decorations or characteristic te scars from self inflicted cuts or burns it was not until the ad impressions taken by a four C ens left lad ai gp s aalt ft AM this is a portion of the personal identification form showing the fingers of the left hand the print of ech each finger is also recorded separately on the card which also contains all necessary written data vent of photography however that law enforcement agencies initiated modern methods and built up rogues galleries the famous bernillon Ber tillon method a system system of measurements ure ments of certain bony parts of the anatomy in addition to the frontal al and profile photographs was an effective but not a positive means of identification since it was early realized that one operative would take these measurements loose and another would take them close resulting in different classifications this system nevertheless was the best possible until the fingerprinting method was developed in the early the pioneer work was done by sir francis galton gallon a noted british scientist who discovered that no two individuals in the world have identical fingerprints and that the pattern remains unchanged throughout life in 1892 he assembled the first collection of fingerprints in the world in 1896 the international association of chiefs of police which includes the heads of police departments of most of the principal cities of this country and canada established a special bureau at chicago this was later removed to washington and became known as the national bureau of criminal identification its purpose was the compiling of bernillon Ber tillon records As use of the bernillon Ber tillon system was discontinued the national bureau gradually began acquiring a collection of fingerprint ger print records FBI took over in 1924 in 1924 this identification division was placed under the jurisdiction of the FBI and received and consolidated in washington the records of both the national bureau of criminal identification and the records of the leavenworth prison more than law enforcement agencies today are submitting prints to the baij bij bureau and more than fugitives are identified by the bureau each month the bureau has now on file more than prints of persons applying for government positions under the civil service commission comparison with criminal records show that 77 per cent of these have had a previous criminal history or about I 1 out of 20 applicants through the vigilance of the FBI these people are barred from obtaining positions of trust within the government heres an example of how these requests of identification work in 1939 the works projects administration in new york city submitted prints of a woman applying for a job as housekeeper search revealed that she was arrested in june 1933 on a first degree murder charge and a fingerprint card sent from sing sing indicated that the woman was incarcerated at ossining Os N Y awaiting execution for murder it is interesting to note that after being sentenced to execution in 1933 this woman was somehow free six years later on september 14 1944 29 persons were killed in a train wreck at terre haute ind twenty or more were army air corps men returned from overseas difficulty was elpe experienced in identifying the bodies but fingerprints were sent to the FBI experts car carefully checked the incoming fingerprints and identified eight of them under names sent in from indiana two other prints however were not identical with those of military personnel whose names were vere given but were identified as two other soldiers names had not been furnished so not all identifications are criminal identifications missing persons have been found amnesia victims identified traffic accident victims identified for instance finger fingerprints brints of an amnesia victim from fresno county general hospital in california were received the victim had been asked to write oh her fingerprint card any names which came to her mind she listed sev seven en names and addresses in gary ind seattle wash and charleston W va As soon as the prints were received by FBI they were found to be identical with a set of prints received from portland ore from a company doing war work in making the application the woman of course had given her correct name and this information was furnished the police in fresno the woman had no criminal record in the FBI files file S import importance ange of fingerprint identification of non criminals is pointed out when the department shows that in the past year alone bodies were taken to morgues and nearly 2000 doomed to burial in potters fields because of inability of authorities to identify them during the same year more than persons disappeared in this country and were sought by relatives and friends fingerprinting ger has solved thousands of these tragedies and returned many lost folks to their loved ones records benefit everyone the department in this connection points out the advantage of voluntary widespread fingerprinting As a permanent seal of personal iden 1 city these fingerprint records offer indubitable benefits to those who take advantage of the service according to mr hoover it appears to him as ridiculous that if a victim of amnesia or of a disaster er ha has t s a prior criminal record his family will be immediately notified while if he has lived within the law his family ignorant of his trouble can render no aid this is an ever recurring paradox because s e fingerprinting ger printing of the criminal is the rule while fingerprinting of the law abiding citizen is still the exception all civil personal persona identification prints are kept in files separate and apart from the criminal records and are there available in case the individual meets with any mishap which makes it necessary to determine Ls his identity one interesting sidelight on the criminal didenti identification fi cation side is the maintenance in conjunction with its regular alias name me file an additional file of nicknames this nickname file now includes approximately cards and is of value in in establishing the identity of criminals who are known only by aliases and nicknames it sometimes occurs that the only clug clue to a particular crime is a nickname used dri unconsciously consciously during the crime many of these names are descriptive and amusing such as ash pan slim dill pickle cream puffs ant eater bughouse bill ul etc A number of cases have been solved by coordinating these names with fingerprints ger prints 7 X the main file room isnow located in the great drill hall of the national guard euard armory the identification division 0 of the FBI now occupies the entire armory this is a temporary arrangement after the war a special building probably will be erected |