Question
One of Servamus’s readers, who is a private investigator, reminds us that “a lot of the times a SAPS fingerprint expert takes a long while to report at a crime scene”.
Accordingly, our reader wants to know whether an SAPS fingerprint expert is the only authorised person who may dust for, and lift fingerprints at a crime scene.
Answer
Reminder
Our Pollex columns are about the law – in particular criminal law-related issues. This means that our reader’s question supra will concentrate on the legal aspects concerned and not on accessional issues such as “who will foot the bill of the private fingerprint expert”; “will the SAPS approve of such an arrangement”; and “will there be cooperation between such private fingerprint experts and the SAPS fingerprint experts (whereby included is relevant data kept by the SAPS)”.
*****************************
This is only an extract of an article that is published in Servamus: September 2023. This article is available for purchase.]