Stunning as it may sound, Oakland's Police Department -- which handles some of the toughest crimes in the Bay Area -- doesn't have anyone who can read or match fingerprints.
The fingerprint unit at the department's crime lab used to consist of three technicians. But for the past seven months, it's been shut down for lack of money and staff.
Oakland cops still dust for fingerprints at a rate of about 113 cases a month. However, according to veteran homicide Sgt. Phil Green, cops often don't even bother to submit the prints for analysis because they know it's useless to do so.
"It's a huge deal,'' said Green, whose unit has been trying to deal with 142 homicides this year alone.
The prints that investigators do submit join a backlog of cases awaiting outside analysis. That backlog now totals 162 cases.
"If the question is whether we will be able to address all these cases in a timely manner, the answer is 'no,' '' said crime lab chief Mary Gibbons.
So far, prints from only about 30 Oakland cases given high priority -- homicides, rapes and the like -- have been sent out and analyzed by the Contra Costa County sheriff's crime lab in what Gibbons herself calls a Band-Aid approach.
As for prints collected from burglary scenes and other property crimes, you can pretty much forget about those being analyzed. And even more serious crimes apparently are getting the brush-off.
"This is shocking,'' said 62-year-old Nina W., who asked that we not use her last name for fear of retaliation. She learned about the fingerprint logjam after she was held up at gunpoint by three young men recently while getting into her car in the Fruitvale district.
The cops collected what evidence they could, including grainy photos from a surveillance camera of the thieves taking $40 from her account at a bank ATM.
Nina, however, couldn't identify any of the young men brought in for a lineup. When she asked investigators why they hadn't bothered dusting for fingerprints on her car door handles and elsewhere, they told her there wasn't much point because the fingerprint unit was closed. The case remains unsolved.
Gibbons said she was forced to close the unit when the last of her fingerprint experts, hired with grant money and therefore temporary, left for the security of permanent jobs elsewhere. That finally got the attention of Gibbons' bosses.
After years of trying, she got funding for two full-time fingerprint analysts in this year's budget. But filling the slots has been hard because of the city's civil service rules.
Gibbons said she doesn't expect to hire anyone until the summer, "at which point,'' she noted, "the unit will have been closed for a year.''
Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan, head of the department's investigations bureau, said investigators don't rely just on fingerprints to nail crooks, not with DNA evidence, ballistics and other tests now in use.
But those tests can take time. For instance, the crime lab spends at least three months processing a DNA sample -- a lot longer than the "CSI" television series would lead you to believe, Gibbons points out.
And Jordan acknowledges that the basics, like fingerprint analysis, are important.
"A department this size in a city this size with the volume of work we have ought to have a fully functional latent print examiner unit so we can better investigate cases,'' Jordan said. "It would make a difference.''
Window dressing: An open-collared and decidedly uninhibited San Francisco Mayor
Gavin Newsom and his flame du jour, 32-year-old Jennifer Siebel, made quite an impression when they showed up arm-in-arm the other night at the Panta Rei restaurant in North Beach.
Gregor Moore and Cindy Cantrell were finishing up a blind-date dinner when the new lovebirds strolled into the Columbus Avenue eatery. They watched as Newsom and Siebel sat down side-by-side at a window table in the front corner of the restaurant, and snuggled and smooched while feeding each other bites of pasta.
"She was sitting on his lap, and they were totally making out -- he was making a spectacle,'' said Moore, a 55-year-old mortgage broker who voted for Newsom three years ago.
Moore also said it seemed to him, from the mayor's loopy behavior, that he had had too much to drink.
"And this guy thinks he's going further in politics?'' Moore asked rhetorically.
Cantrell, 49, had a different take on the mayor's behavior.
"He was infatuated with his date,'' Cantrell said. "He was so enthralled with the
woman that the rest of the world didn't exist. Under the circumstances -- the mayor in a restaurant in North Beach on a Friday night at close to midnight -- it was perfectly appropriate. Frankly, I was envious -- mine wasn't going anywhere like that.
"If (Newsom) was drunk, he was intoxicated with her love -- like any two people when they are newly in love.''
Whatever the case, Moore refused to let the matter pass quietly. Leaving the restaurant, he walked past the mayor's waiting driver and told him, "You better get him home.''
Newsom spokesman Peter Ragone's take?
"Mr. Moore is wrong," Ragone said. "The mayor had a glass of wine and some pizza with his friend after being at a charity event at 'Beach Blanket Babylon.' ''
As for Cantrell, Ragone said: "She sounds like a wonderful person, and hope she stays and votes in San Francisco.''
Oh. In case you're wondering -- Moore and Cantrell's first date apparently was their last.
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