In some of King County's most recent high-profile crimes, fingerprints -- not DNA -- lead to arrests.
According to investigators, Dayevion Royalston left a print on a countertop at SeaTac’s Best Value Inn when he allegedly murdered Brent Arancio June 15.
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Court documents detail how Louis Arbee Jr. --- charged with raping a woman at a SeaTac assisted living facility last year --- left prints on a window screen.
And Arquae Kennedy was identified as a suspect in a $100,000 diamond theft because of fingerprints left on the glass door at Diamonds, Inc. in Bellevue in April.
King County’s AFIS program -- which stands for Automated Fingerprint Identification System -- has more than 800,000 prints online.
Instead of having to eyeball and compare prints, an examiner can run prints through a computer for a much quicker, possibly nationwide match.
The prints of everyone booked in King County are collected and processed.
Michele Triplett has been lifting prints for more than 30 years.
"People have a really hard time not touching cookie jars, refrigerators," Triplet told KIRO 7 in 2017.
"They always want to see inside those things, so we have a lot of success processing those items."
The new AFIS levy is expected to cost homeowners 3.5 cents for every $1,000 of home value.
For a $600,000 home, the annual cost would be about $21/year, according to King County.
A cost that has seemed reasonable to voters since 1986.
“We have had successful levy passes for the past 30 years,” Sheriff Mitzi Johanknecht said on Thursday.
However, “We’re hearing some concerns from folks, quite frankly, about the taxes that have already arisen for homeowners.”
Johanknecht said if the levy fails, fingerprinting work done by AFIS’s 115 employees will be transferred to the Washington State Patrol Crime Lab and local police departments, slowing the process of crime-solving.
She asked voters to continue funding AFIS when they cast their ballots in the primary election on Aug. 7.
For more information:
- Council sends Levy for Automated Fingerprint Identification System to Ballot
- King County Regional Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS)
Cox Media Group
