Internship Reflection: How Have You Impacted Your Community?
I contributed to making my community a better place by interning at the Chula Vista Police Department (CVPD) with my mentor, David Garber: the forensic specialist of the Police Department. My internship partner and I took on a validation study case for a chemical called 1,2-indanedione. 1,2-indanedione is a chemical that detects latent fingerprints and we were testing it specifically on thermal paper.
The CVPD currently uses a chemical called Ninhydrin to find latent fingerprints on evidence/items. When thermal paper is covered in Ninhydrin in attempts to reveal the prints, the chemicals inside the paper react and turn black covering the whole paper. It does not get rid of the latent fingerprint, but it does mask it making it harder for the forensics team to find and use it in court as solid evidence. The Chula Vista Police Department is not allowed to use 1,2-Indanedione until they have experimented and have come back with positive results proving that it works efficiently; this is where we came in handy. This had initially been a project that was given to our mentor, so him passing the project along to us was a big responsibility.
To prove this experiment would have positive results, we placed bare, amino acid, and lotion-dipped fingerprints on the thermal paper before making 1,2-Indanedione and using the dipping method; which consists of soaking the papers in our 1,2-indanedione solution. For three weeks, I took part in research, lab work, and solution write ups.
As our internship came to an end, we were able to gather all of our data. We came to the conclusion that pursuing professional research and experiments on 1,2-Indanedione is important because it was proven so far to be a successful method to retrieve latent fingerprints on thermal paper. Our start of this validation study can change the way the Chula Vista Police Departments approaches investigations involving latent prints and make our community a safer place.
The CVPD currently uses a chemical called Ninhydrin to find latent fingerprints on evidence/items. When thermal paper is covered in Ninhydrin in attempts to reveal the prints, the chemicals inside the paper react and turn black covering the whole paper. It does not get rid of the latent fingerprint, but it does mask it making it harder for the forensics team to find and use it in court as solid evidence. The Chula Vista Police Department is not allowed to use 1,2-Indanedione until they have experimented and have come back with positive results proving that it works efficiently; this is where we came in handy. This had initially been a project that was given to our mentor, so him passing the project along to us was a big responsibility.
To prove this experiment would have positive results, we placed bare, amino acid, and lotion-dipped fingerprints on the thermal paper before making 1,2-Indanedione and using the dipping method; which consists of soaking the papers in our 1,2-indanedione solution. For three weeks, I took part in research, lab work, and solution write ups.
As our internship came to an end, we were able to gather all of our data. We came to the conclusion that pursuing professional research and experiments on 1,2-Indanedione is important because it was proven so far to be a successful method to retrieve latent fingerprints on thermal paper. Our start of this validation study can change the way the Chula Vista Police Departments approaches investigations involving latent prints and make our community a safer place.