Actually, that is not true. I have done such identification work both in my office, and in the field.
You look for wear patterns, manufacturer sole patterns, of course, and accidentals- unique cuts or gouges in the soles that can only be made by one shoe( moccasin). If you are working from a photograph, you enlarge the photo to life size, and then print it out on a piece of plastic. With the see- thru image placed over the questioned print, or image,its quite easy to do with an ordinary Xerox machine to make the copies.
In the field, where we have 3 dimension images or impressions to examine, its actually much easier to match a known track to an unknown, because you have more than just the 2 dimension footwear impression to examine. There are class characteristics from your gait that indicate eye dominance, sex, age, condition of health, any recent injuries, height, if you are carrying anything, and where you carry it, Stride lengths for both feet, step intervals, straddle, pitch angles of both feet, etc. which help a Tracker make a positive ID of a suspect track to a known set of tracks. A tracker has a much wider range of skills than does a crime Lab Technician who simply compares photos or casts of suspect prints to shoes (or moccasins) submitted for examination.
I have discussed this short coming with the now retired head of the FBI crime lab, Footwear Impression, ID section, at Washington,(William Bodziak) who was a witness in the famous O.J. Simpson Murder trial back in the late 1990s.
I am not suggesting you can do this without some training and education: rather, I am saying that experienced and skilled trackers can make positive IDs in the field when they are given the opportunity.
Heck, I was called over to a law office near my own one morning by one of the attorney's who worked there. They had been victimized by a Burglary on Friday night, and the Urbana Police spent the weekend staking out their office, as they suspected the same man had hit a couple of nearby offices, and apparently came back a second time to use the bathrooms, which he did not flush! There were tracks all over the grounds, both at the office, and next to it in a vacant lot that was used as an herb garden for local residents.
The attorney, an experienced hunter, had found the footprints, and called me over to read them for him. I correctly identified some of the tracks based on ONLY their class characteristics, and, in one case, because the man was obviously left handed by the way he climbed over a high wall.
Later that day, the Detective assigned to the cases came by and I went through the grounds showing him the tracks John had found, and shown me earlier in the day. One new shoeprint had to have been made by one of only 3 men in the department, based on its size, alone( Well, I also knew that the track had been made Sunday nite, after a short rain,not on Saturday, or Friday nite, nor in the daytime, based on the location of the print, and the path the officer had to take in the dark to have left his shoeprint in that location.Since the office had been staked out until Monday Morning, anyone else would have been stopped by the police. The print therefore had to be made by an officer.)
The detective told me that one of the men was on medical leave, the other was on his days off, but the third man- who I had last heard was on a long medical leave, and didn't know that he was back at work- turned out to be the man who left the track.
I don't know what impressed the detective more: My identifying the maker of that track, or taking his fingers in my hand to make him feel the arc of the heel of a track of a shoepring in bark chips, that he could not see, even when I pointed it out, and pointed the beginning and ends of the arc.
He did ask me why I was so sure the first print was made by an officer. I told him its a print of an expensive leather shoe, with very new heels on it. The print was in fresh damp soil, leaving a very clear easy print to read. I told him that burglars didn't usually own such expensive( over $!50.00) shoe these days, and " Felony fliers" were usually the cheapest gym shoes they could buy at discount stores. If they had expensive shoes, they sold them for as much as they could get, used the money to buy felony fliers, and spent the rest on dope.
The only people who wear shoes this expensive and have to keep them in good condition are Police officers, and Military personnel. Since Chanute Field( at Rantoul, Il) had closed, that left only Police officers, with Sergeants making their lives miserable if their heels begin to look worn active in the county. ( U of Il. ROTC students were not likely candidates as either burglars or to be walking around this flower garden in the dead of night.)
He just smiled, and commented on how well I knew the people he arrested. I reminded him that I had represented Hundreds of these guys when I was an asst public defender.
The Detective that jumped down into the flower bed off a high wall was 6'5" Tall, had a much longer foot and shoe than I do at 6'1", and was wearing an expensive running shoe that left an impression of part of the side of the shoe in the loose, soft soil there. Where he landed told me where he came over the wall, and that told me he was Left handed. Only this investigator met those requirements, and the Detective told me that in fact, this Investigator Had climbed over the wall and jumped down into the flower bed on Saturday evening.
I explained all this to the Detective I was with, so that he understood how I could make such deductions from the tracks and partial tracks available. The few tracks of the Burglar had been walked all over by the responding officers, so there was nothing left of his for me to examine. That was frustrating for me.
When John called me up and asked me to come over to his office to help read the prints he found, I was hoping that the police had not been so enthusiastic about climbing over the high wall to get into the small courtyard where the burglar entered a window he broke. But, they had gone in to try to get fingerprints, and palm prints, never thinking about getting the footprint evidence FIRST!
I have a few articles on the internet on tracking, and I have previously sent copies of them to other members who were interested in knowing about tracking. If you would like copies of those articles, I will be happy to forward them to an email address. Just send me a PT here. There is no charge for this.
My interest in disseminating information about trackers and tracking , is so that a broader range of the public begins to learn about these skills, learns them for their own uses, and demand that their police departments learn these skills to use to search crime scenes.
Burglars and thieves can conceal their fingerprints by simply wearing gloves. But, until criminals learn to fly, they have to leave footprint evidence going to and leaving from the crime scene. The same skills I use in the field when scouting or hunting for deer, are skills I use when hunting criminals.
Since I learned to track humans and domestic animals first, and wild game second, my learning curve is a bit different than most folks. But, it really doesn't matter which you learn to do first. Because seeing small impressions, and " sign " is so much more difficult than looking down and seeing a human footprint or shoeprint, I tend to begin my tracking students out learning how to follow people. Then, when they have shown some skill in cutting sign, I turn them loose on wild animal tracks- with deer being the largest animal most students have around to track.
I went to tracking school, and we ended a week long advance class by tracking field mice up and down a clay embankment. Now, that is hard work!
Thanks for showing an interest. :thumbsup:
