My car is being vandalized.I find marks that look like finger marks. I want to make sure that the prints can be lifted before I make a police report.
You id the prints as usable. You then put plain old Scotch tape over the prints and lift it off. You then place the Scotch tape, sticky side down, on a piece fo clear cellophane. The fancy equipment you see on TV is just basically Scotch tape cellophane. Lifting is not the hard part. Having the knowledge experience to decide if you have a useable prints or not is.
The best thing to do is contact your local police dept first. Have them lift the prints. Hopefully they have a responsive crime scene unit. If you did it yourself you will run into problems later. For example: if they have suspects in custody and it goes to court a defense attorney will ask Mr. ___, do you have experience, training with lifting latent prints from a vehicle?. If not then you have some explaining to do. I say leave it to the professionals. Besides, they may have the suspects in custody already from another crime the following day, but if you lift the prints from your car and hold on to it how are investigators gonna run those prints against the data base system so the perpetrators can be identified? Another problem is having the proper tools to lift the prints. Plain old Scotch Tape is not going to do it! It may look like that on TV but it is no where near that. It is specialized tape. It looks like Scotch tape on TV because that what it SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE ON TV. The real thing also looks similiar but it is not the same. The latent print is then transferred onto a glossy 3x5 card and submitted as evidence. Then it is ran thru the Computer system. I encourage you to watch what a real professional uses to lift a latent print when you call the crime scene unit. Some agencies will come to your home to conduct a fingerprint investigation. Also, you might be able to report the crime online or over the phone.
The oils in fingerprints could shop them from being washed off by skill of rain. If the law enforcement officers do get fingerprints from the eggs and you're charged with the vandalism, you would be arrested. once you get arrested, your fingerprints would be taken.
