About 51 detainees at police cells in the Mangaung region of the Free State were fingerprinted, and seven of them identified as being wanted for other crimes, police said on Sunday.
Captain Sam Makhele said the police visited four facilities as from Thursday and used a new ”morpho-touch” mobile fingerprint device to scan the inmates.
The operation, dubbed Night Shift, was conducted at Parkroad, Heidedal, Navalsig and Bayswater police stations and ended on Sunday morning. Makhele said the seven inmates identified as still being wanted for outstanding cases other than those for which they were detained were wanted for from motor vehicle theft, stealing, shoplifting, possession of suspected stolen property and burglary.
The suspects’ criminal records could be verified by only making the inmates to touch the scanning screen of the morpho-touch with the pointing finger of each hand. The device could tell within 10 seconds whether that particular inmate was wanted anywhere in South Africa, or even abroad.
”Through this system police all over the country can network with each other more than before and within a very short space of time,” he said. Makhele said on Sunday at about 4am, the device was used again at the four police stations but this time to confirm the crimes of about 44 detainees, who were recently arrested.
They had been apprehended on 49 charges, ranging burglary, armed robbery, motor vehicles theft, assaults and malicious damage to property. All these arrested suspects would to appear in various magistrate courts in the Mangaung region on Monday.
Provincial commissioner Moranodi Gaobepe said: ”We are going to make sure that all those suspects who are still on our system of possible wanted criminals are being arrested, so as to avoid the escalating commission of the same offences by the same people.
”We are going to make use of these system of identifying wanted people in most of our operations, not only in the southern part of the Free State province, but all over the province.” – Sapa