Thousands of fingerprints unprocessed in Kansas City

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Kansas City police are facing a backlog of more than 6,200 sets of unprocessed fingerprints, mostly from suspects in property thefts.

Law enforcement officials admit a key element of crime-fighting is hindered by the growing number of prints not yet examined, leaving some property crime cases in limbo for years.

"It's a serious problem," said Karl Zobrist, president of the Board of Police Commissioners. "We've got to come up with a plan to fix it. I know it can't be fixed in a couple of months. But we've got to do more than throw our hands up."

With only four fingerprint examiners on staff, a backlog of cases has been a problem for years.

Through June 30, some 784 sets of fingerprints had not yet been processed in 2004. That's in addition to 2,592 sets from last year and 2,842 from 2002.

The backlog has led to criticism of the police department.

City Auditor Mark Funkhouser said in April that the number of Kansas City property crimes solved in 2002 was below average compared with similar metropolitan areas. Some 10.1 percent of such crimes were solved here, compared with 17.8 percent in other cities, according to the study Funkhouser cited.

A security officer for a local laundry business, Mark Beeley, showed up at a police board meeting Tuesday to complain about the problem, too. He said he had just become aware of the logjam of property crimes.

"That startled me when I heard it," he said. "There needs to be more funding or something to fix this problem."

Deputy Police Chief Rachel Whipple, who oversees the department's Investigations Bureau, said more property cases could be solved if it could process all its fingerprints, but budget constraints prevent hiring more staff.

Some prints can take days to match.

"I don't want people to think that we don't care about their property," Whipple said.

"