Lindsey Olson likened the process of applying fingerprinting dust onto a piece of evidence to a “spinning ballerina,” as she used her fingertips to twirl a thin, black brush. Its long, soft threads flared out as the crime scene investigation supervisor demonstrated to about a dozen participants of the Costa Mesa Police Department’s Citizen Academy on Thursday.
It was the fourth of eight sessions scheduled to take place at Costa Mesa Police Department headquarters, 99 Fair Drive, and the first hands-on experience of the program. After a brief tutorial, participants donned surgical gowns, gloves and masks. They were then allowed into two small connected rooms where investigators analyze evidence.
Swirling patterns emerged as participants swabbed glass beakers and lightbulbs. They then gently pressed pieces of clear tape onto the revealed fingerprints, careful not to disturb the dust those were made of as they did.
“Everybody seemed energetic and excited to learn,” Olson said after the session. “I saw everyone getting hands-on and lifting prints. They all did a really good job.”
The technique practiced during the academy is just one of many used by investigators to find fingerprints on evidence or at crime scenes, Olson said. Others include the use of chemicals that turn a bright purple on contact with body oil or superheated superglue that crystalizes to form a relief of a print.
Investigators travel all over Costa Mesa in white vans responding to practically every crime that takes place in the city, Olson said. They sometimes spend over an hour searching not only for fingerprints, but also blood, hair, other forms of DNA and anything that might be a potential piece of evidence.
Academy participant Christine Green, 52, said she had a chance to observe investigators working in the field when she went on a ride-along with an officer earlier in the program. They were responding to a home and SUV that had been broken into on a cul de sac near Newport Boulevard.
“Dusting, pulling the fingerprint, pulling it off the sheet and logging it many times, it was fascinating,” Green said. “I found it almost artistic. Of course, they also do blood and all kinds of gross stuff.”
Olson chuckled when asked if she thought of her profession as an art form. But she conceded that like painting, sculpting or drawing, it requires good hands, patience and attention to detail. She added that it took years of practice before she truly felt she was proficient. She recalled how her first instructor once made her apply and then lift a piece of tape from an unmarked surface over and over for about an hour.
“I sat at a desk and had to do that at least 500 times before he let me touch a fingerprint brush, and I remember thinking ‘Let me at it! I want to do this!’” Olson said. “But that actually helped me because now I’m able to smooth out prints and have a lot more control with what the tape is going to do.”
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Eric Licas is a crime and public safety reporter for the Daily Pilot. He previously spent four years as a staff writer with the Orange County Register and the Southern California News Group. He has been on the ground to cover active wildfires, civil unrest and mass shootings. He was born in the Philippines, raised in the San Fernando Valley and is a Cal State Northridge alumnus. His inspirations include his parents, Diane Arbus, Kurt Vonnegut, Ronnie James Dio, Randy “The Macho Man” Savage, John Waters, and his orange tabby cat named Critter.