Fast fingerprinting in Kamloops

Jeremy Deutsch - Kamloops This Week  Published: October 20, 2011 10:00 AM 
Volunteering for community groups in the Tournament Capital is about to get easier.  City council has approved spending $25,000 to purchase and install digital fingerprinting equipment at the Kamloops RCMP detachment.  Every year, the detachment performs roughly 6,000 police record checks for a variety of reasons and about 1,000 need to be fingerprinted.  Fingerprint forms are currently being sent to Ottawa by mail to compare prints against known sexual offenders who have pardons. The process can take three months or longer.  With the new equipment, which will obtain the fingerprints digitally, the turnaround time will be cut down to five days. A staff report noted 47 applicants could not volunteer at the Western Canada Summer Games this past summer because fingerprinting comparisons were not completed in time.