84: Chapter 83: Identifying the Same 84: Chapter 83: Identifying the Same Changyang City.
Under the scorching sun, traffic surged, the glossy black silk stockings roamed the streets, and the tender long white legs swung back and forth.
Jiang Yuan opened his eyes, climbed up from the hard bed, and waited a few seconds before realizing he was already staying at the Provincial Department’s guest house.
He drew back the curtains, outside was a lush expanse of greenery, presenting a beautiful scene that reflected generous watering.
Jiang Yuan stretched and slowly folded his quilt, then took even longer to wash and dress.
Two days into his stay in Changyang City for the “Province-wide Fingerprint Information Case-Solving Operation,” Jiang Yuan had come to understand that the lazy mornings were the most relaxing time of the day, almost the only time to relax.
Once he stepped out the door, he had to maintain his police appearance and demeanor with pride.
The office, on the other hand, was another kind of terrifying freedom.
You could eat, drink, and dress as you pleased, and shout as you wished, as long as you could match fingerprints with that kind of freedom.
More than thirty fingerprint technicians from across the province gathered together, working themselves to the bone.
Each person had to examine three thousand fingerprints a day to meet the average.
Zhu Huanguang, a police officer from Changyang City, was the province’s king of fingerprint matching, routinely examining over 6000 fingerprints daily, an incredible feat to outsiders.
In fact, Zhu Huanguang could spend 14 hours a day reviewing fingerprints, averaging 500 fingerprints per hour, which amounted to 8 fingerprints per minute, giving roughly 8 seconds of observation time for each fingerprint.
Under this intense work rate, he had already solved four cases from other cities and counties.
According to tradition, or rather, as per the normal development of fingerprint case-solving operations, the number of cases solved was bound to increase over time.
This is because the experts’ familiarity with the fingerprints would slowly grow, and as time went on, more and more cases would be solved.
This was one of the reasons why fingerprint case-solving operations were continuously promoted.
In the past, fingerprint experts worked individually in various units, and not only did they compete with each other, but they also had to attend meetings and do other miscellaneous tasks that anyone in the unit could do, preventing them from focusing solely on fingerprint comparison.
The fingerprint operation was different.
During the fingerprint operation, the provincial department or ministry covered accommodation, round-trip travel expenses, and business trip allowances, bringing fingerprint experts from all over to focus solely on comparing fingerprints and thereby accumulate familiarity with them, continuously increasing the probability of solving cases…
The fingerprint experts were also very happy.
They were all in their thirties and older, sleeping in dormitories, eating in canteens, not having to worry whether their wives were happy, whether their children had done their homework or if their parents had quarreled.
They didn’t need to read the mood of their leaders or deal with their colleagues’ petty schemes.
Every day, what they faced were dozens of familiar yet strange faces, hundreds of familiar yet strange fingerprints, and the “Unsolved Cases Solved Rankings” on the wall.
Life couldn’t be more comfortable.
The reason why such a mutually beneficial event still had a time limit was mainly because the provincial department was worried about working the experts to death.
Of course, the experts’ states and case-solving efficiency varied.
For example, on the office’s “Unsolved Cases Solved Rankings,” behind Jiang Yuan’s name, the number of cases solved was a clear zero, ranking him last alongside a dozen other technicians.
However, Jiang Yuan didn’t seem to be in a hurry.
Upon arriving at the office, he first brewed himself a cup of tea before surveying his surroundings.
Comrade Zhu Huanguang was engrossed in his work; fingerprints flew across his computer screen.
Next to him, a female colleague was applying eye drops to herself.
Beside her, a chubby colleague was eating a pancake, his screen also flickering with scrolling fingerprints.
Honestly, the state of this office looked very much like a study room for an over-aged college entrance exam, no matter how you looked at it.
“Xiao Jiang, you still haven’t broken your zero, not in a hurry?” The uncle at the next workstation looked over with a teasing smile.
He had bummed half a pack of Zhonghua from Jiang Yuan the day before, and they had become fast friends.
Jiang Yuan smiled and turned to him, “Don’t you also have a zero?”
“I’m used to it,” said the uncle with a grin.
“I’ll wait for you guys.”
“Then I’d better hurry up and catch up,” said Jiang Yuan, completing his daily banter, and turned his attention to the screen.
Before long, in the study room…
no, in the “Provincial Fingerprint Information Crime-Solving Operation” office, only the sound of keyboard and mouse clicks remained.
Jiang Yuan sat back in his chair, also gazing at the computer screen, and after marking a characteristic point, he would look at many other fingerprints.
The fingerprint comparisons during the operation differed markedly from routine comparisons.
First, the fingerprints selected for the operation were those sent from various locations, with limited numbers and quotas, along with an entry and exit mechanism.
To put it simply, petty cases were rejected, those without the benefit of time were not considered, and fingerprints that hadn’t undergone multiple matches by respective local forensic teams were also excluded.
Therefore, the fingerprints that made it into the operation were either from significant crimes or complex ones that were difficult to solve.
Some of the fingerprints could be as sparse as one-fifth or even one-sixth of a normal fingerprint, yet still required an attempt to match.
For these challenging fingerprints, relying on the fingerprint matching system was pointless.
This was something that ordinary forensic technicians could do, there was no need to go through the trouble of filling out various reports and then submitting them to experts for processing.
For this reason, the fingerprint experts in the office, when dealing with difficult fingerprints, set the number of candidate prints directly at 200 or even more than 300.
It was tantamount to maximizing the role of humans, or rather, maximising the workload on humans.
Prints that would normally be filtered out by software were now being scrutinized all over again by human effort, and it had to be the highest level of expertise in forensics.
But without this approach, most cold cases would be impossible to solve using regular software systems.
This represented one of the significant differences between criminal investigation technology and ordinary technology.
While ordinary technology might prioritize cost-effectiveness, willing to sacrifice some functionality to ensure cost and efficiency, criminal investigation technology also considered costs and sought a return on investment, but at times, would spare no expense to solve a case.
This logical conflict had been troublesome for the experts from the beginning.
However, this quandary did not affect Jiang Yuan.
All he wanted was to simply match fingerprints, which he was indeed doing.
At that moment, a fingerprint resembling a parallelogram passed by in front of Jiang Yuan.
A fingerprint he had seen the day before immediately sprang to mind, which also featured the uncommon parallelogram pattern and belonged to a rare and perverse rapist.
Although, the fingerprint that had just flicked past on the software system showed no connection with the one viewed the day before—it appeared while Jiang Yuan was comparing prints for a robbery case.
But the first thing Jiang Yuan thought to do was to bring the two together for a manual comparison.
Both fingerprints were incredibly blurry.
While they both appeared to have a distinct parallelogram shape to the human eye, the software system did not agree with this assessment—the points, grooves, and ridges inside these prints only matched by less than 30%.
Yet, the direction of the ridgelines was consistent.
This indicated that one of the fingerprints was blurred exactly at a critical area and might have severe deformation, and the other print was likely in a similar condition.
As Jiang Yuan thought and compared, and after triple-checking, he finally lightly clicked the right mouse button on the right side, marking it: determined as identical.
Instantaneously, a continuous “ding-dong” sound arose from every corner of the office.
All the experts present who hadn’t turned off the notifications became aware of a new development—someone had made a determination of identity on a fingerprint.