 Hello everyone, it's Vinicius, your Community Outreach Specialist for the Pascua Sheriff's Office and I just wanted to go ahead and give you a quick intro to let you know that in today's video we're going to be spending some time with forensics and the latent unit, if you couldn't tell, by everything behind me. But let's stay tuned, we're going to find out what's the difference between the two, why they love what they love, why they do what they do, and all the good stuff. Hi guys. Hi. Introduce yourselves. I'm Jason Belas, I'm a lane-printing seeker and examiner with the lane-printing unit here in Pascua. Love it. Mike Talamo as well, latent print unit, latent print examiner. I love it. Okay. Hi, I'm Jacob Becker, the night shift supervisor in forensics. Hi, I'm Heidi Sieber's forensic investigator, Keena and Handler. Hi, I am a forensic investigator, Sarah Mormino. Hi, I'm a forensic investigator, Holly Kane. Hi, I'm forensic investigator, Ruth Aquino Knight. Hey, I'm Kirsty Garcia, forensic investigator. Hey, I'm Sue Miller. I'm day shift supervisor in HRD K9 Handler. Boom. And this is not all of you guys. The unit is much larger, correct? Much larger. Explain to me, explain to the people what exactly does the latent print unit do? Yeah. We follow under forensics and we have our forensic investigators, they're the ones who go out to the scenes of crimes. They collect evidence, be it photographs, DNA, whatever. One of the things they also look for is latent prints and they submit that latent print evidence in and it is our job to evaluate those prints for sufficiency or value. Are they of value that they can be identified? And if they are, then we search them using our APHIS, our automated fingerprint identification system or we use our manual capabilities here. We have our magnifier there, Jason. I take this fingerprint card and we'll compare it under glass to the latent fingerprint and try to make an identification that way. So our job is basically identify any print that comes into this unit and then get back to the investigating officer with that information. Whenever we get those prints, each individual print has details in them. That's what we focus on as examiners and determining whether something is of value or no value is just trying to find if we have enough points there to actually make an identification. The only way you will make a match is how? If the suspect's prints are in that system, the system will kick those back and we'll get, in our system specifically, we got 15 potential matches. And so we have to go through those and determine whether or not those aren't just matches or not. We've also, whenever detectives or deputies have suspects, they send their print, the fingerprints and then we manually compare those as well. Oh, many of that. So that probably means that you guys are very detail-oriented and, you know, very thorough with your process. You can say that. Because it's a big weight on what you guys do. Yeah. What sort of database do we have at the Pascal Sheriff's Office? We have two different databases. We have our automated fingerprint identification system, which has access to all the fingerprint cards in the state of Florida. We have arrest cards. We have government job application cards or permit cards, anything that your fingerprint for that goes into the system. And we search those when we have a lower level crime. We have our second year with our local database, which we are still building up. We have access to all the local fingerprints that come in through the jail every day. And we'll use this, the theory being that some of those lower level crimes, we're not going to have a criminal driving down from Jacksonville to go into a parked car overnight and steal something. So here, this gives us a quicker search, quicker results back rather than waiting online for the rest of the state, all the different agencies are all trying to get in that system. This one is just ours and we were fortunate enough to get this system a couple years ago. I love that. Okay, good stuff. Also, Mike touched on something, 1915 locker doors guys, hashtag 1915. It's important. Okay. So let me ask you both. What is your, for each of you, your favorite thing about the latent print unit? What does it for you when it comes to the unit? Being able to find an identification, every print is kind of like a puzzle. So knowing that once we kind of crack that puzzle, it helped the forensic investigators and the detectives kind of put bad guys away. That would be the same thing when you got that phone call or that email from the detective or someone from the attorney's office saying, Hey, we didn't have any leads in this case. And thanks to that fingerprint, we were able to solve this and put this away. And that makes you feel good, makes you feel like you, you did a good job. Hasheg we fight as one. It's a true thing. Okay, now if there was one other thing that you would like the public to know about the latent print unit, what would it be? What would you want them to walk away with? Is it like a misconception or myth? Or you saw something in a movie and you're like, ha, that's not what we do. Well, that pretty much is, you know, don't it's, it's not as quick. It's not as easy as seeing it on TV where it all wraps up within a few minutes. It is a time consuming process. And there is a lot of work that goes into it. And it's a two person job for us. Anything that Jason does, I'll verify anything I do. Jason won't verify. We always want to be certain we want no mistakes to be made. Not only would that not be good for the person if we made a bad ID, but it doesn't look good for the department or the latent fingerprint world in general. So by verifying each other's work and by, you know, taking the time to make sure that everything we do is not 90% or 99% sure. It's 100% sure when we make that. So quick question before I go. You guys said you're thorough. You take your time. What is the quickest and longest that it's ever taken you to, I guess, not come up with the 15 matches because that happens when you run the fingerprints. So I guess maybe to make a match. Yeah. That depends on how many prints we have first case. Understood. You know, we can have as little as just one to 60, one case depending on how big the case is. Okay. And then suspects as well. We can have no suspects where we're just trying to search the whole database on the computer or we can have a stack of fingerprint cards because we have multiple suspects that the detectives are giving us. And then we're going to go through manually and look at every finger on that card versus every latent fingerprint that we received from the crime scene. Wow. That's all I had to say. You guys are incredible. What you do is incredible. I couldn't do it. But thank you for talking to us and thank you for explaining to the people and hopefully clarifying some things. Thank you. Hey, Holly, what is your absolute favorite thing when it comes to forensics? Shooting reconstruction, which is the process of reconstructing a shooting incident through the use of our lasers and our trajectory rods. It's my favorite thing. It's so prominent in today's society. There are so many gun related incidents and it's just important to be able to give people a visual and kind of reconstruct that entire scene and make it make sense when a crime like this really doesn't make any sense at all. So how long have we been doing things of this major, like shooting, reconstructing scenes? What's 2020? So I mean, a while? A while, almost for as long as I've been employed here, which is coming up on four years. Okay, shout out to the pastor. Best technology. Hi, Eddie. Hi. What's your absolute favorite thing about working in forensics? So I love having a human remains detection canine that comes to work with me every day, as most of you know. However, another aspect of forensics that I really love is that a blood scene pattern analysis and interpretation, which includes pattern identification. But one of my favorites is determining the angle of impact and area of origin, which can be done with a lot of math that we're not going to go into. But the bloodier the better. And it poses a big challenge for me, which I like. So interest. Okay, bye. Okay. What is your favorite thing about working in forensics? So I am a huge osteology nerd, which is the study of bones. So it's not too often that we come when we come across human remains, but it does happen. And a lot more often, especially here in Pasco in the rural areas, we run into animal remains. And for someone who doesn't have a background in bones, it could be difficult for them to determine the difference, especially when you just have some vertebrae and ribs. So I'm actually in the process of partnering up with FIRST, which is our forensic research facility that we're building and to create a bone lab to teach other agency members and as well to teach outside agencies and schools how to differentiate between animal and human remains when in the field. So do you like animal bones? I do. So this is a coyote, which not many people would know if they found that out in just, you know, in the grass. We have a bobcat skull. This is a deer skull. But the antlers have been cut off. So that's why his head is flat like that. And then we have some more over here. So when you run into these in the field, these are clearly not human. But when you run into vertebrae, it becomes a little difficult. Okay. What is your thing when it comes to forensics? One of my favorite things is basically just the science behind death. I enjoy the different stages of decomposition and just learning about just different types of death investigations. But also one of my favorite things is just learning a little bit about everything, especially being one of the newest FIs here within the agency. Thank you. I super enjoy it. So I just enjoy learning a little bit about everything, but mostly just participating in death investigations. So I know since you just said that you're on the newest to the unit, did you enter with us? No, I did not. I do have a background in CPI. I was with Child Protection for a year and a half. And then yeah, I loved it. It was a great experience. And I learned a lot. I learned a lot there, but I'm super happy to be here with forensics, which is my lifelong dream. My two supervisors. Okay. Almost last, but definitely not least. Jake, you're up first. What is your thing when it comes to forensics? I love all of forensics. I'm a bit of a generalist, which means I dabble in all things, shooting reconstruction, blood analysis. You may say that I'm a jake of all trades. I appreciate you so much. I do. I love it. Okay, Sue. What is your favorite part when it comes to forensics? Well, like Jake said, as supervisors, we have to be involved in all the aspects of forensics. So we have to be very skilled at it so that we can jump in and help any of the investigators at any time. I do love photography. Photography is an absolute 100% the most important thing in forensic investigation. If you can't portray what you saw at a crime scene to the juries, that's not going to go well. So I like to take photographs while I am working and also while I'm off. It is well. Yes, for the tidbit. Love. It's okay. So I would ask you, just like I asked everyone else, what their favorite thing is about being in the forensics unit, but I might have already learned and heard from many talks that you have a thing about bugs. I do. I love bugs. I like entomology, which is the study of insects. So I have several different species that I've collected here from some death cases. Some have been gifted to me like this one right here is my favorite. It is a mole cricket and it actually came off the carcass of an unidentified bird and it was gifted to me by our very own F.I. Mormino. Wow. I love that. But you know friends know what friends mean. They do. Yeah, that's, they do. And I come and I come to the office and there'll be a bag of bones that she finds. That's true. So we work well. You work, you bounce off of each other, you know? Definitely. Some of the other ones that I have have been gifted to me by other investigators that work here with us. So I'm always happy for my gifts. No. Okay. So everything that's right here, these little glass jars are all bugs. Yes. These right here are blow flies. I don't know if you can see them. Yeah. Yeah. Then these, these right here are eggs from the blow flies. No, where's my camera? Okay. Okay. And then these are different end stars which are the different stages that the larva go through before they become a fully formed blow fly. Wow. So safe to say that you may have a thing or two about bugs. Yes, definitely. Okay. So you told me why you love bugs. Well, you told me that you do love bugs, but why do you love bugs in relation to forensics? There we go. So they play a really important role in forensics because depending on the stages in which the eggs or the bugs were found, they can help narrow down the time of death. That's wild. That's wild. Okay, guys. So that concludes a short video with the forensics unit, just half of them, not nearly all of them, but with them talking about the things that they love about the unit, why they do what they do, why they're interested in it. But if you guys want to do this again, we'll see. But, or you could also come to Leadership Pasco. You can come to Youth Leadership Pasco. You can be in an awesome school that they do a presentation for. So basically you just got to get lucky. But thanks for tuning in. Don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and I'll see you next time. Okay, so just learning something, another thing. What did you just do this month? I just want to talk about that. What did you get this month? Why didn't you mention that? That's incredible.