Tag Archives: fingerprints

Turner names interim HPD chief

Congratulations, Chief Montalvo. Mayor Sylvester Turner has tapped 36-year Houston Police Department veteran Martha Montalvo to lead the department while his team conducts a nationwide search for a new permanent chief. Montalvo, 56, has served as chief of staff to … Continue reading

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Austin will vote on rideshare ordinance revision

The month of May just got a lot more interesting. Let the people choose how to regulate Uber and Lyft, a divided Austin City Council decided late Thursday. The council, on a 2-8-1 vote, declined to adopt an ordinance underlying … Continue reading

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Two more places that Uber won’t operate

Goodbye, Galveston. Just days after the City Council passed an ordinance designed to regulate transportation networks, Uber has shut down its service in Galveston. Monday evening, people in Galveston who tried to use the phone app to order a ride … Continue reading

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Maybe the state should regulate Uber and Lyft after all

Texas Monthly reviews the current state of affairs with transportation network companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft and their fight against mandatory fingerprinting as part of the background checks that new drivers must ondergo, all of which is playing out … Continue reading

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Austin passes new vehicles for hire regulations

It’ll be very interesting to see how this plays out. Defying implied threats that such a vote would chase Uber and Lyft out of town, the Austin City Council late Thursday put into city statutes mandatory fingerprint-based background checks for … Continue reading

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Statewide Uber/Lyft bill passes out of committee

It’s gotten better, but it’s still not good enough. A bill to establish statewide rules for “transportation network companies” like Uber and Lyft has been tweaked to address some concerns that its background check requirements weren’t stringent enough. That change … Continue reading

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More Uber safety debating

It’s a topic that’s not going away. With the new, smartphone-based services, drivers and passengers said, the relationship between the person behind the wheel and the person paying for the trip is unique: “It’s just you and them,” one driver … Continue reading

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Voter fingerprint ID

This has superficial appeal, but I don’t believe it holds up under close scrutiny. Fingerprints can now be used to unlock smart phones, car engines, even guns. Why not ballots, too? A New Mexico legislator has just proposed that his … Continue reading

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Bite marks

Grits reminds us that not all forensic science is scientific. I ran across an interesting article documenting critiques of forensic dentistry. In it, bite mark expert Dr. Gregory Golden: concedes that there’s little scientific research to back claims from forensic … Continue reading

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Only some kinds of mistakes were made

I probably shouldn’t be, but I was amused by this Chron story about the current state of the HPD fingerprint lab and the consultants who audited it. [HPD Assistant Chief Timothy] Oettmeier said consultants also had performed more in-depth technical … Continue reading

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The forensics backlog

I was going to blog about this Chron story regarding a backlog in fingerprint analyses for the HPD Crime Lab, but Grits said most of what I was going to say, so just go read him. The key, I think, … Continue reading

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Fingerprint problems

Lovely. An audit of the Houston Police Department’s fingerprinting comparison unit revealed so many problems that investigators will be reviewing all violent crime cases for the past six years, officials said Tuesday. Major problems in the Latent Prints Comparison Unit … Continue reading

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CSI: Needs Improvement

Looks like Gil Grissom got out at just the right time. Crime labs nationwide must be overhauled to prevent the types of mistakes that put innocent people in prison and leave criminals out on the street, researchers have concluded. A … Continue reading

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