New fingerprint technology urged

Mother to testify of threat to teen

When Stephanie Hartnett saw the man who had followed her 13-year-old daughter to her Roslindale home, she knew he was not the teenager he claimed to be in text messages and e-mails. But when Boston police responded to her call, it took them more than an hour to determine he was a level-three sex offender from Texas.

Now, Hartnett is trying to persuade city officials to purchase portable fingerprint scanners for police cruisers so police can quickly determine when a suspect is potentially dangerous. She will testify at a City Hall hearing today at the request of Councilor Rob Consalvo, who has proposed the purchases.

"If we had had the fingerprint scanner, in four minutes we would have known who he was," said Hartnett, a 38-year-old former Brockton paramedic.

Boston police plan to have a representative at today's hearing of the City Council public safety committee. Elaine Driscoll, spokeswoman for the Police Department, said officials were interested in considering the technology, but deploying it might require upgrading the department's wireless connections.

Hartnett said that last year her daughter met a man who claimed to be 17 on "what was supposedly a kid-friendly site."

In late September, the man boarded a bus in Austin and headed to Boston, where he waited for Hartnett's daughter at Hyde Park's Cleary Square. Hartnett said her daughter decided to continue home on the bus with the man following her, because she knew both her mother and father would be there.

From there, Hartnett described a scene similar to Dateline NBC's "To Catch a Predator" series, with her playing the role of NBC's Chris Hansen.

She called 911, and Boston police sent several cruisers to her home. After about two hours in which Hartnett said the man gave police multiple false names, dates of birth, and Social Security numbers, they were able to identify him as 28-year-old Aaron Johnston.

Police arrested Johnston and charged him with enticement of a child under the age of 16. In Texas, Johnston had been convicted of possessing child pornography and charged with aggravated sexual assault of a child.

He served several months in a Massachusetts prison after pleading guilty to the Boston charge. He has since been returned to Texas, where he is serving a sentence for failing to register as a sex offender, witness tampering (related to subsequent contacts with the Hartnett family), and criminal trespass.

Consalvo says portable fingerprint scanners, which are used by law enforcement in dozens of other Massachusetts communities, would cost about $8,000 each. He said homeland security funding is available.

A local attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union said the use of the scanners could raise privacy concerns if people are detained on the street for the sole purpose of running their prints through a database. But Consalvo said authorities would use the scanners only when they would have probable cause to do so in a station. The portable scanners just save authorities valuable time, he said.

Consalvo has proposed new technology for the Police Department before. In 2006, he proposed that the city install a gunshot detection system called ShotSpotter to immediately alert police to gunfire in the city and its precise location. After several delays, police began installing and testing the system last fall. Police say they largely have worked out kinks in the system that had led officers to respond to false alarms; it has contributed to faster response times and a number of arrests, they said.

Hartnett hopes the city embraces the technology, for the safety of the public and the police.

"We owe it to the men and women who we expect to put their lives on the line every day to protect us and our family. We owe it to them to give them the tools available today to make sure they get home safely to their families."

John C. Drake can be reached at jdrake@globe.com.