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Memo to drug dealers: Chewing the skin off your fingertips may not help you avoid arrest

A Revere man faces heroin-distribution charges despite mutilating his fingertips in an attempt to prevent investigators from matching him to evidence, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office says.

Rafael Cesario, 31, was arrested last week, along with two other men, on charges they ran a drug-distribution ring out of an apartment at 54 Shirley Ave. From a press release:

Suffolk County prosecutors successfully argued to have "major case prints" – inked impressions of the palm and entire length of the fingers ... because he had either burned or chewed off his own fingerprints. Investigators took his booking photo to the Registry of Motor Vehicles Facial Recognition Unit, which used biometric identification technology to match him with an active Massachusetts driver's license in that name – as well as a denied application for a license under [another name]

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Comments

Why is this not standard operating procedure to have "major case prints" taken of all criminals at the time they're booked? I had to have my whole hand printed at BPD headquarters when I got my gun permit.

I guess it's a matter of "priorities".

Any guesses as to how many crimes have been solved by matching fingerprints found at crime scenes to fingerprint cards of gun license applicants?

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Wouldn't one way to reduce the "need" for handprints, etc. be just to create a national database of gun serial numbers and bores identified by purchaser that traveled with the gun like a "car facts" sheet? That way people who met the basic requirements for gun ownership (no felonies, mental illness etc.) could just have their guns and use them in law abiding ways like hunting or sport shooting but any gun used illegally could be traced to its last owner? In addition to helping police catch people who purchased guns and then sold them to criminals purposely, and to help police catch anyone who committed a crime with their own gun, it would allow owners to report any guns that were stollen and thereby make re-sale of those guns more difficult.

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So far, it's cost them over a billion in tax dollars to maintain and hasn't helped reduce the crime rate or catch any bad guys.

A billion dollars will put an awful lot of cops on the streets.

Tough choice.

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How could it cost $1 Billion to maintain a gun registry? I'm talking about requiring gun manufacturers to make a record of every serial number and bore which would be kept in a computer database (which could be paid for by them btw) and then every gun seller would be required by law to enter the name of the individual who purchased that gun. A billion dollars for this sounds a little fishy.

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