Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department
The Las Vegas Metro PD was awarded the 2018 Biometric Identification Award. Once more, it was a burglary and an attempted sexual assault rather than a murder. Las Vegas police were worried that their criminal will soon carry out another attack if they weren't caught.
One night, the female victim woke up to find a stranger in her bedroom, which is how the case got started. After a fight, he rushed on her and demanded to know where she stored the money. She indicated a jar by her bed, and the thief made off with the enormous sum of $26 after seeing her point.
Despite his careless attack, the suspect showed astonishing skill at leaving no evidence behind. Almost little indication remained that he had ever entered that home. He was competent, but the forensics team outperformed him and found two latent palm prints.
It is very infrequently that a case only produces usable palm prints and no fingerprints, but that is exactly what happened in this case. Naturally, there were no matches in the neighborhood database, but fortunately for the Las Vegas PD, the FBI's NGI System also featured a palm print database, which at the time had about 15 million entries. It was doubly lucky because their suspect, Phillip White, who was ultimately found guilty of attempting a sexual assault, was present.
- Year: 2018
