Elementary, Watson: Scan a Palm, Find a Clue

By SHAILA K. DEWAN. November 21, 2003

 

Words and Phrases

quintessential piece – самая существенная деталь

surveys of law enforcement agencies – исследования по правоохранительным органам

palms, not fingers – ладоней, а не пальцев

computerized matches – сопоставления с помощью компьютера

to build their own palm databases – создать собственные базы данных

concerns some defense lawyers – вызывает озабоченность защитников

reliability of fingerprint matching – надежность сличения отпечатков пальцев

national repository for palm prints – национальный банк данных по отпечаткам ладоней

have reported good results – сообщили о хороших результатах

property crimes – преступления против собственности

powerful tool – могучий инструмент

brings up possible matches – приводить возможны сопоставления

conceivably – убедительно

dime – десятицентовая монета

images of astonishing resolution – изображения с потрясающим разрешением

to bind the victims – для связывания жертв

digitization – цифрование

DNA profiling – применение анализа ДНК

The criminal courtroom is no place to experiment – зал уголовного суда не место для экспериментов

adding footprints – добавление отпечатков ног

 

For more than a century, the fingerprint has been the quintessential piece of crime scene evidence. But fingerprints are only a tiny part of the story. All of a person's "friction ridged skin" is distinctively patterned: soles, palms and even the writer's palm, as the outer side of the hand is called.

Surveys of law enforcement agencies indicate that at least 30 percent of the prints lifted from crime scenes — from knife hilts, gun grips, steering wheels and window panes — are of palms, not fingers.

That is why in April, the New York Police Department began having prisoners place their whole hand, not just their fingertips, on the glass platen of a scanner when their prints are captured. Beginning next month, the department will be able to do computerized matches of the 100,000 palm prints it has already collected. As the database grows, it will become one of the largest of its kind.

The cost of image storage and computerized matching equipment once limited database entries to fingertips. But technological advances have enabled a growing group of law enforcement agencies across the country — about 30 so far, based on information provided by companies that sell the systems — to build their own palm databases. The Los Angeles metropolitan area began using one last month. Miami, Palm Beach, Philadelphia and Indianapolis have created databases this year. And Harris County, Tex., which includes Houston, has a database in the works.

Using palm prints for identification concerns some defense lawyers, who point out that the reliability of fingerprint matching has come into question in the courts in recent years, and that there is even less data available on palm prints. But proponents of using palm prints note that none of the dozens of fingerprint challenges have succeeded.

There is as yet no national repository for palm prints, but the Federal Bureau of Investigation is currently assessing three systems, including one by Sagem Morpho, the biometrics company based in Tacoma, Wash., that designed New York's database and scanners.

Police departments have long taken palm prints with ink, either routinely or case by case. But computerized databases are expected to exponentially increase the number of matches, as they did with fingerprints. Since 1999, when the F.B.I. computerized its fingerprint database, its crime lab has matched about 1,200 crime scene prints, more than five times the number found in 15 years of laborious manual matching, said Stephen Meagher, the head of the lab's latent print operation.

Though statistics on palm data are hard to come by, the law enforcement agencies that have begun using palm databases have reported good results, said Steven Nash, the chairman of the International Association for Identification, adding that many detectives have run prints from older cases. "They are getting hits on previously unknown and unused latent palm prints that are just lying around doing nothing," he said.

One city that has kept a count is Indianapolis, which has come up with a match in 15 percent of its palm searches, according to statistics provided by Identix, the company that created the system. That is not as high as the 31-percent success rate for the city's fingerprint database. But there are only 16,000 palms in the system thus far, compared with 300,000 fingerprint records.

Investigators are hopeful that the palm technology will help solve more property crimes, many of which depend on fingerprints for resolution. Property crimes nationally are solved at a much lower rate than violent crimes — 16.5 percent compared with 46.8 percent, according to F.B.I. statistics.

"It's worth every cent, and especially the victims are going to think that," said Sgt. Donna Wright, an investigator for the Palm Beach County Sheriff's Office who has gotten two hits so far from running palm prints on burglaries. "A burglar goes out and probably commits 300 or 400 crimes a year."

Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly of New York said through a spokesman, "This is cutting edge technology that gives our detectives another powerful tool to help solve crimes."

At the police academy in Manhattan last week, Officer Maximilian Velazquez stood by a row of new ILS2 palm scanners, each one about the size of a video arcade machine. The department has 83 of what will eventually be 140 scanners — at least one for every precinct, courthouse, transit and housing bureau. When officers book an arrest, the machine prompts them through the print collection process. Fingers, thumbs and palms are positioned on the glass in sequence, as the print images appear, much magnified, on the screen.

The best thing about the new machines, said Officer Velazquez, a coordinator in the computer training unit, is that it rejects faulty prints, gently scolding with messages like "finger rolled too slowly" or "finger shifted vertically."

Just as with the old scanners, each set of prints is transmitted directly to the department's database, where the computer brings up possible matches and a fingerprint examiner at Police Headquarters makes the final determination as to whether it is a hit. With the new database, examiners could conceivably make a match from a fraction of a palm print smaller than a dime.

While a few departments have had palm print databases for several years, New York will be one of the first to have a system that uses live, or inkless, scanners that feed directly into the database, said James E. Simon, the head of the N.Y.P.D.'s Central Records Division. (The department has used live scanners for fingers since 1997.)

While the scanners offer images of astonishing resolution, significant chunks of the fingerprint record-keeping system seem stuck in the dark ages. For instance, the city scans in fingerprints and transmits them to the state, which then makes hard copies and mails them to the F.B.I., which rescans them into the national database.

When three people were murdered in an apartment over the Carnegie Deli in Manhattan in 2001, the police ran a check on one suspect and learned that he had been arrested in Georgia. The palm print card from that arrest was carried to New York by a special courier, said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Robert M. Morgenthau. The card matched a palm print found on duct tape used to bind the victims.

The palm database is part of an upgrade to the New York Police Department's print archive, including the digitization of two million ink fingerprint cards dating back to 1981, which were not searchable by suspect or arrest number. The database project will cost $5.9 million over the next five years, Mr. Simon said. The 140 new scanners will cost an additional $5.8 million.

Why undertake a project like this when DNA profiling is advancing so quickly? "DNA is subject to destruction," Mr. Simon said, adding that 340 World Trade Center victims were first identified by fingerprints, and 50 of them remain identified only by fingerprints.

Some defense lawyers raise the same objections to palm print identifications as they have to fingerprints. "The criminal courtroom is no place to experiment with a scientific method that may incriminate someone," said Steven D. Benjamin, the co-chairman of the forensic evidence committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

But even if the scientific basis of palm matching is questioned, Edward J. Imwinkelried, an evidence expert and professor at the School of Law at the University of California at Davis, said that judges will most likely still admit it as "nonscientific expertise," just as they have sometimes done with fingerprints.

Mr. Meagher, of the F.B.I. crime lab, said that the scientific underpinnings of palm print identification are the same as those of fingerprint identification, and he does not expect either to be successfully challenged. "It wouldn't surprise me if four or five years from now we were having the same conversation about adding footprints" to the database, he said.

 

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

 

Задания к тексту

 

1. Проработайте лексику, данную перед текстом. Прочитайте текст, не пользуясь «Англо-русским словарем».

 

2. Найдите, где в тексте говорится о следующем:

 

- не менее трети всех отпечатков на месте преступления являются отпечатками именно ладони;

- описывается процедура снятия отпечатков ладони;

- создаются свои базы данных в национальном масштабе;

- говорится об оборудовании, применяемом для снятия отпечатков ладони и его производителях;

- статистики мало, но отзывы уже хорошие;

- о полицейской академии на Манхэттене и её оборудовании по работе с отпечатками ладони;

- приводится пример успешного расследования тяжкого преступления с помощью отпечатков ладони.

 

3. Переведите на русский язык некоторые, по-вашему, интересные тезисы в разных частях текста. Попросите одногруппника найти их в тексте по-английски.

 

4. Выпишите необходимый набор лексики для кратчайшего тезисного изложения текста.

 

Unit 22

 

Тема: психология, социология, педагогика

 

Текст: Бьет – значит, любит?

 

WHY I BEAT THE WOMAN I LOVE

Cosmopolitan, May 2002

Words and Phrases

domestic violence – насилие в семье

to exert brutal power – применять грубую силу

to sob - рыдать

moaning – жаловаться, стонать

to have the last word – оставлять слово за собой

to argue – спорить, ссориться

the final straw – последняя капля (букв.: последняя соломина, переломившая спину верблюда)

to batter – колотить

counseling programmes – программы психологической помощи

abusive men – мужчины, склонные к насилию

blame women for their behaviour – обвинять женцин в своем поведении

male violence – насилие со стороны мужчины

to handle – управляться

anger is no excuse for violence – злость не является оправданием для насилия

to nag – придираться, изводить

reasons – причины

these have nothing to do with an abused woman – они совершенно не связаны с избитой женщиной

undervalued at work – недооценен на работе

inevitability – неизбежность

shifts the blame – смещает вину

As a part of Cosmo’s ongoing campaign with Refuge to domestic violence, we take a look at the serious issue behind what triggers a man to exert brutal power and control over woman. Here, Christine Aziz talks to Adrian* about what drove him to terrorise his wife Claire*.

Adrian, 26, a barman in Sheffield, vividly remembers the first time he slammed his fist into his wife’s Claire’s face. “I was having a beer in front of the TV one Saturday, when Claire, 33, came in from shopping,” he recalls. “I could tell she was in a mood – she slammed the door and flung her shopping on the floor. I got up to get another beer and she started shouting about how much I was drinking saying I had a problem.

 

From vows to violence

“I was fed up with her constant criticism. I could feel her breath on my cheeks as we stood face-to-face in the doorway. And that was it. I snapped. I pulled my arm back and before I knew what I’d done – smack – my knuckles hit the softness of her eyes. She fell back onto the armchair and I drove my feet into her legs, repeatedly kicking her. She didn’t make a sound. She just drew her legs up to protect herself and curled up with her arms around her head, whimpering.

“I just stood there, as if I was in a bubble, my hands by my sides, breathing heavily, looking at her”, Adrian recalls. “She started sobbing and I let her run past me into the bedroom. I sat back down in front of the TV as if nothing had happened. I wasn’t proud of what I’d done, but it had stopped her moaning. She always wanted to have the last word – and that used to drive me mad.”

But Adrian blocked the attack from his consciousness and, the following day, approached Claire in ignorance of the damage he had done. “I slept on the sofa that night. In the morning, I went into the kitchen and Claire was making breakfast in silence for our 14-month-old daughter Ellie*.

“Claire had a black eye. I’d blanked out what had happened, struggled to remember what I’d done. As I looked at her, it gradually came back to me. I’d lost my temper. I was to blame. She wouldn’t look at me, so I wrapped my arms around her and promised it would never happen again. She started to cry. It was pitiful – and I caused it. But I still felt like I was justified in doing it. We’d been arguing for months. That day was the final straw. Claire had wound me up so much, hitting her was like a solution.”

Adrian is just one of thousands of British men of all ages, class and race who batter their partners in the home. A woman is beaten by her partner every 6 to 20 seconds, according to recent research carried out by the UK Violence Research Programme at the University of London. In the UK alone, Home Office statistics for 1998 reveal that each week, two women in England and Wales are killed by their partner or ex-partner.

Psychoanalyst Adam Jukes runs counseling programmes for abusive men and is author of Why Men Batter Women (Routledge, £14.99). He says Adrian is typical of abusive men who will always blame women for their behaviour. “Adrian says Claire kept moaning at him about his drinking and had to have the last word. If he was drinking and ignoring her concerns until she became angry, then he was being abusive, not her. Male violence is never caused by the woman’s behaviour. It’s the man’s fault – always. When Adrian says he was angry because Claire wanted the last word, it was because he wanted it.”

Three months later, in the heat of another argument, Adrian hit Claire again. “As our voices grew louder, I threw my clenched fist into her shoulder as hard as I could, then thumped her in the chest, knowing It’d hurt, but the bruises wouldn’t be seen. But this time, within seconds of hitting her, I felt bad about it and my eyes started to prick with tears. I looked at her clutching herself in pain and thought to myself, “What the hell are you doing?” She looked terrified, but as I stretched my arms out, she came to me and we stood together in the kitchen hugging and sobbing. I told her it wouldn’t happen again. But in my heart, I knew it would. Claire and I were arguing more and more, I had such anger growing inside me. This was the only way I knew how to handle it”

 

Taking responsibility

But according to Sandra Horley, Chief Executive of Refuge, anger is no excuse for violence towards women. “Anger is a technique for control and power. Like anyone, violent men can make choices whether or not to control it. We don’t all hit people when we feel angry. It’s just another excuse for men not to take responsibility for their violent actions and maintain power in the relationship. There are no excuses”.

Jukes agrees that women can’t be held responsible for being abused. “When a man comes to me for help and justifies violence with the behaviour of the woman, I ask, “What were you doing to make her nag?”. Abusive men don’t take responsibility for their feelings or actions. They blame women for what they feel. There is no justification for violence, but there are reasons. These have nothing to do with an abused woman, but everything to do with men who abuse.”

Experts believe domestically abusive men are from families where male violence towards females in the home was a regular occurrence. Adrian is one of them. His father used to beat up his mother, and Adrian was sexually abused by a family “friend”. “Dad would come home and moan about the cooking and smash plates. I saw him hit Mum and she often walked out. I won’t ever forgive Dad for what he did. I was 11 when she left for good. I never told anyone about the sexual abuse and just bottled everything up”, Adrian says.

But despite his condemnation of the way his mother was treated, Adrian copied his father’s behaviour. “Although I hated what my father did, I learned how to control the situation with violence and anger. I thought men were superior to women and being abusive got the results I wanted”.

“During the seven years we were together, I threatened to kill Claire, criticized the way she looked, threw books at her, smashed my fists against walls. It terrified Claire, but for me, it was a way of keeping control. I felt I had to be the strongest, be a man, and this was the only way I knew how.”

Adrian felt undervalued at work, with the result that he didn’t feel like “a proper man”. Instead, he enforced his “manliness” with violence. “I just wanted to sit down with Claire and tell her how overwhelmed I was by society’s expectations of me”, he says. “But instead I thought I had to be in control and not share my feelings in case she saw me as week. Looking back, I now realise that what I was doing to Claire is what my dad did to my mum, and what I hated in him. I didn’t make the connection at the time. I’d been taught to control with violence”.

But, as Horley says, witnessing violence in the home as children isn’t an excuse for abuse in later relationships, and isn’t an inevitability. “Growing up with violence is a risk factor, not a cause. Violent men also come from non-violent homes”, she says.

Adrian attacked Claire three more times in the next three years of marriage. Each time it was harder for the couple to make up. Adrian moved in and out of their flat several times, until finally, after seven years of marriage, he moved out for good. “Having time on my own made me realise what a hideous mess I’d become”, he says. “Even though I knew Claire and weren’t meant to be, she didn’t deserve to be treated like that. I was determined not to behave in the same appalling way if I met anyone else”.

 

Desperately seeking support

That moment came a month later, when Adrian met Suzanne*, 24, in a bar. It was a turning point in his life. “She was very understanding. I told her about incidents I hadn’t told anyone else – like the domestic and sexual abuse.” They’ve been together for three years now and have a baby son. Adrian hasn’t hit her and believes he won’t.

“I don’t want to hurt her. I know the effect it had on Claire. If the time ever came when I wanted to hit her, it would be time to end the relationship. She’d leave and I can’t risk it. Deep down I always thought Claire would stay – no mater how violent I got”. This is a common thought, according to Jukes. “Abusive men fear abandonment”, he says. “Sometimes it’s the only thing to stop them”.

Adrian felt he’d always be at risk of hitting again unless he sought help. He didn’t know where to go, then five months ago, he heard about a programme for abusive men run by Ray Wyre, sexual crime expert and founder of Ray Wyre Associates which runs courses and support resources in sexual crime and abuse. He embarked on a three-month residential course and now attends a weekly seminar with other perpetrators of domestic violence.

From his own experience of working with abusive men, Jukes believes Adrian can end his violent behaviour. “For a good long-term change, he will need three to five years of therapy,” he says. “If he stops his therapy now, he may eventually hit his partner”.

But according to the research from the US, where such groups have been running for years, many men do return to violence in the long term. This makes Horley question the chances of Adrian’s ever “recovering”, and she thinks the onus should be on supporting the victims rather than the perpetrators. “Why should these men be given therapy?”, she says. “In an ideal world, yes, but it’s naïve to think these groups will change society. In having these groups, we are in danger of giving a message that they are “sick”. In the past, it has been the women who had been given this label; to set up men’s groups merely shifts the blame – from sick women to sick men. It will not alter the statistics.”

And the statistics are of great concern to Horley, especially as domestic abuse is the least likely violent crime to be reported to the police. According to the Home Office, just under one third of all incidents were reported in 2000. “Women always ask me what they can do to stop their partners abusing them”, she says. “I tell them there’s nothing a woman does that makes a man hit her. She is never the cause of abuse – and there’s nothing they can do except leave”.

 

www.cosmopolitan.co.uk

 

Задания к тексту

 

1. Проработайте лексику, данную перед текстом. Прочитайте текст, не пользуясь «Англо-русским словарем».

 

2. Найдите, где в тексте говорится о следующем:

- она была «не в духе»;

- «я стоял, как будто внутри надутого шара»;

- «виноват был я»;

- «она всегда пыталась оставить последнее слово за собой»;

- приводится статистика по семейному насилию на Британских островах;

- утверждение, что женщины никогда не бывают виновны в насилии;

- мы ссорились все чаще и чаще;

- злость – это способ контроля над ситуацией;

- его отец, бывало, бил его мать;

- он укреплял сою мужественность применением силы;

- агрессивные мужчины боятся остаться одни;

- после лечения у многих все же возникают рецидивы насилия.

 

3. Переведите на русский язык некоторые, по-вашему, интересные тезисы в разных частях текста. Попросите одногруппника найти их в тексте по-английски.

 

4. Выпишите необходимый набор лексики для кратчайшего тезисного изложения текста.