June 25, 2010 - Government Technology - By Russell Nichols
Plymouth County, Mass - Sheriff Joseph McDonald calls the county's latest crime-fighting tool "an iPhone on steroids."
A fitting description for the device, which he said enhances and strengthens the ability of law enforcement officers to identify suspects and retrieve their criminal records in seconds by capturing biometric data.
"The technology is a game-changer," McDonald said. "It's going to enable officers to really get a handle on who the bad guys are, and make it more difficult for these bad guys to hide from us."
This month, Plymouth County became the first in the country to deploy the Mobile and Wireless Multi-Modal Biometric Offender Recognition and Information System (MORIS). The system is part of a national network, designed to help law enforcement agencies keep track of sex offenders, gang members, inmates and illegal aliens, said Sean Mullin, president of Plymouth-based Biometric Intelligence and Identification Technologies (BI2 Technologies), which developed MORIS in partnership with Apple.
Paid for by a $200,000 federal grant funneled through the Massachusetts Sheriffs' Association, the technology is a sleeve that fits over an iPhone and captures electronic fingerprints, iris scans and photographs. The biometric data then gets sent to an encrypted and secure cloud-like database.
