Coy Hodge’s line of work can sometimes mean the difference between guilty and innocent.  

“We’re really behind the scenes but we make a big difference for the law enforcement side of it,” Hodge said.

Hodge works for the King County Regional Identification Program, also known as Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). AFIS is the fingerprint database King County uses to identify people.

There are two types of fingerprint examiners- tenprint and latent. Tenprint examiners compare known-to-known fingerprints, whereas latent examiners compare unknown prints to other known prints.  Typically, latent examiners work on crime scene investigation.

If an officer is suspicious of a person, they’ll take them to a Livescan device which electronically captures and transmits a fingerprint image to the AFIS database, where tenprint examiners search to see if any other fingerprints match.

“We receive them and then run them through our database. Then the fingerprint examiners will get a candidate list and go through each candidate on the list to see if the prints can be identified.  Once a “Hit” or “No Hit” is determined, then it will go on to a second examiner to verify the conclusion,” Hodge said.

Fingerprinting also can be used to solve crime cases and occasionally someone in AFIS has to testify in court to explain how they identified a person.

“It’s looking at the small details, the minutia in the fingerprints,” Hodge said. “You have to make sure you have all these matching characteristics to be confident in your conclusion.”

Although AFIS predominately processes criminal fingerprints, they also help people resolve identity issues, verify fingerprints for concealed pistol licenses, adoptions, school teachers and employment.

Starting out, Hodge wanted to be a detective.

“I always liked law enforcement. I had actually gone to school to be a police officer. I wanted to do the investigative work, I wanted to become a detective,” Hodge said.

But then she started with the Sheriff’s Office as a tenprint information specialist and has been with the County ever since.

“I got into this position and I started taking more classes and I really enjoyed it. The more I learned about it, the more excited I got and the more I enjoyed it and the more I wanted to learn,” Hodge said.

As a tenprint information specialist (then called a data specialist), Hodge took the identified person’s information and researched the charge information submitted to make sure it was accurate, to update a person’s criminal history report.

“That stays with them permanently, so it’s important that it’s accurate,” Hodge said.

Since then, Hodge has been an identification technician in jail facilities and is currently a tenprint examiner.

Although her job is behind the scenes, she knows it makes a difference.

“There are times when law enforcement will have arrested somebody on a infraction and then their fingerprints are run, and law enforcement is notified within a few minutes that that’s not the person they say they are,” Hodge said. “That’s someone you don’t really want to cut loose.”

Oftentimes Hodge won’t hear the end result of her work, but when she does, the work pays off.

“I feel it’s very rewarding for me to know that I’m helping out in that way. And what I do can make a difference,” Hodge said.