Fingerprinting delay frustrates would-be mom in Cape Breton

A scanner that the Cape Breton Regional Police Services uses for processing fingerprints has been out of service since early this year and that's frustrating some people who need a police record check.

Kimberly Batten and her husband are trying to adopt a child. As part of their application to the Nova Scotia Department of Community Services, they both submitted fingerprints over a year ago. Now they need to do the same for an elderly family member who lives with them.

But the local police keep putting them off.

"Right from the beginning they said, we're having some issues ... it'll be fixed.... We're waiting for a part ... give us a call back next week," said Batten.

That was more than three months ago.

"The adoption process is long and detailed," she said. "Like it's already been a year of this process and we haven't even been assigned a social worker for our home studies. My home study is currently tied up waiting on this fingerprint check. And I'm not getting any younger. My husband isn't getting any younger."

New scanner not working 

The problem is with a LiveScan machine, a scanner that allows police to send fingerprints for processing through federal databases. It needed to be replaced early this year.

A new machine was shipped from out-of-province. But when they went to install it, they ran into a problem with the software.

"We certainly do understand and empathise with the frustration that people are experiencing ... we're doing all that we can to fix it as fast as we can," said police spokesperson Desiree Magnus. 

Cape Breton Regional Police have a back-up scanner, which requires more manual operation, so works more slowly, but it too has been out of service on and off in recent months.

"There was several weeks, probably even months there, where we were unable to process any fingerprints at all," said Magnus.

That includes both community requests for record checks, and fingerprinting for people in custody.

The backlog of fingerprints is now in the hundreds, said Magnus.

She expects the software issue with the LiveScan machine will be resolved very soon.

Police will then assign extra staff to help work through the backlog.