Department To Use Eye Scans To Keep Track Of Inmates
Tarrant (TX) County Commissioners approved a request from the Sheriff’s Department to provide roughly $48,000 in funding to supply law enforcement officers with eye-scanning devices for identifying suspects.
SecuriMetrics is delivering three of the handheld devices, which are equipped with iris recognition technology, to Tarrant Country officers, who will use the technology for processing outgoing and incoming inmates at the local jail.
The department plans to expand applications for the system in the future. Some $20,000 of the county funding will be allocated to developing a special database for containing up to 75,000 digitized records. The remainder of the funds will pay for the combined $21,000 purchase cost of the devices and related expenses.
Rick Salazar of SecuriMetrics notes the human iris remains the same after an infant reaches 2 years old. The devices can search the database for iris matches at a rate of 1.5 million records per minute.
The Tarrant County Sheriff’s Department plans to use the system to facilitate quicker identification of inmates, who sometimes use aliases to conceal their identities. However, the department will also continue using fingerprints during the identification process.
Abstracted by the National Law Enforcement and Corrections Technology Center(NLECTC) from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram (09/03/03) P. 3; Baker, Max B.
