The Jasper County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina is looking into new technology that could be more accurate than fingerprints in identifying people.

At Thursday’s regular elected officials meeting, Sheriff Archie Dunn told county officials he and others in his department are traveling to Oklahoma next week to examine systems that identify people using the patterns in the iris of a person’s eye. [Source: Carthagepress]

Finding this ironic as police in different parts of the country are trying to find ways of identifying criminals and people with out using fingerprints. As most of us know that fingerprints can be altered to show no find to a partial fingerprints. Leaving the police department in turmoil trying to identify a criminal and not knowing if the fingerprints have been altered.

On the day that I was reading about this new technology that Jasper County is inquiring about, in our own town we had a police shooting.

A disturbance happened with three people in a red car. The police chase the car to another area. Once they had thought they found the car, they stop the vehicle, get out and four officers shot the young man getting out of his car in the back.

Did they ask questions or just shoot. They shoot, not only one officer but four officers shot the young man leaving stray bullets down the street hitting an innocent by stander and putting a bullet hole in a window of a club that was packed on this Friday night.

I found out more about what happened later Saturday morning. The young man was a personal friend of the family for years as was his parents and grandparents. Ben Sonenberg was shot in the back by police officers that would have rather shot then ask questions.

Now all four officers are put at desk jobs till the investigation is over. Families are asking questions why was he shot in the back when no weapons found on him or in the car. The only thing Ben was doing is holding his cell as he got out of the car, not knowing what was going on. He started walking for the club and police shot him in the back.

Does this mean that the police have the right to shoot then ask questions. Seems to me we hear more and more about the officers are getting gun happy. Maybe is the time for all officers and police department to use a technology that is called ask questions and then shoot. Is it necessary that all four officers have to shoot at the same time? Or as they said they feared their life and lives of people around the area. Did they fear when the stray bullets hit a person and shattered the window of a night club with it filled to capacity?

[tags]Police Technology, Shooting, Biometric Technology[/tags]