This morning, I boarded the 6 train back to City Hall and back to 1 Police Plaza. My goal: a complete set of fingerprints to be sent off to the FBI.
In all honesty, I was never very keen on this task. Fingerprinting has always gone hand in hand with arrests and forensic evidence in criminal trials. I found it somewhat distasteful that I, a law-abiding citizen, would be compelled to submit to a process normally inflicted upon criminals. I pictured ink staining my fingers, like stigmata, marking me out as, at best, a person of interest to the police and at worst, a cold-hearted felon. The indignity of it all!
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I idly conjured wild conspiracy theories in which the FBI, now possessed of all 10 of my fingerprints, had all the information they would ever need to frame me for a crime. They could claim I was a bank robber in Wichita, Kansas, and they could prove it too by recreating my fingerprint! And what if one day I did commit a "crime" - something innocuous... Did I really want to hand the FBI information that would lead to my eventual conviction?
And what about privacy? Don't we all have a right to privacy - penumbral as it may be? One thing I never understood - why does the FBI need my fingerprints anyway to tell me if I have a criminal record? Surely, fingerprints lead to a criminal record and not vice versa? I'm almost positive that once the government has its grubby hands on my prints they are not going to use them for the sole purpose of granting me a criminal record. My personal information will forever be stored in some US government database, eternally part of some monumental line-up of potential suspects to a myriad of crimes.
Once I arrived at the Police Headquarters, I made my way past the front gate. There, I placed my backpack into an X-Ray machine and marched through a metal detector - no trip to a federal building would be complete without this quintessential post-911 welcoming ceremony. Finally, I actually entered the police station and noted the the front lobby was plastered with plaques honoring fallen police officers. An entire plaque (19 officers in total) displayed the names of officers who had been killed on September 11. A sobering thought.
Eventually, I found my way to the small office charged with fingerprinting for state, local and FBI criminal record searches. I presented myself to the lady at the front desk, who curtly informed me that she did not accept cash payment for the fingerprinting but could only accept a money order. As I exclaimed in despair, "A money order!", with traditional New York brusqueness, she rapidly repeated her instruction even faster and louder as if that would somehow get the information more easily through my thick skull.
In all honesty, I was never very keen on this task. Fingerprinting has always gone hand in hand with arrests and forensic evidence in criminal trials. I found it somewhat distasteful that I, a law-abiding citizen, would be compelled to submit to a process normally inflicted upon criminals. I pictured ink staining my fingers, like stigmata, marking me out as, at best, a person of interest to the police and at worst, a cold-hearted felon. The indignity of it all!
Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I idly conjured wild conspiracy theories in which the FBI, now possessed of all 10 of my fingerprints, had all the information they would ever need to frame me for a crime. They could claim I was a bank robber in Wichita, Kansas, and they could prove it too by recreating my fingerprint! And what if one day I did commit a "crime" - something innocuous... Did I really want to hand the FBI information that would lead to my eventual conviction?
And what about privacy? Don't we all have a right to privacy - penumbral as it may be? One thing I never understood - why does the FBI need my fingerprints anyway to tell me if I have a criminal record? Surely, fingerprints lead to a criminal record and not vice versa? I'm almost positive that once the government has its grubby hands on my prints they are not going to use them for the sole purpose of granting me a criminal record. My personal information will forever be stored in some US government database, eternally part of some monumental line-up of potential suspects to a myriad of crimes.
Once I arrived at the Police Headquarters, I made my way past the front gate. There, I placed my backpack into an X-Ray machine and marched through a metal detector - no trip to a federal building would be complete without this quintessential post-911 welcoming ceremony. Finally, I actually entered the police station and noted the the front lobby was plastered with plaques honoring fallen police officers. An entire plaque (19 officers in total) displayed the names of officers who had been killed on September 11. A sobering thought.
Eventually, I found my way to the small office charged with fingerprinting for state, local and FBI criminal record searches. I presented myself to the lady at the front desk, who curtly informed me that she did not accept cash payment for the fingerprinting but could only accept a money order. As I exclaimed in despair, "A money order!", with traditional New York brusqueness, she rapidly repeated her instruction even faster and louder as if that would somehow get the information more easily through my thick skull.
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