For the management of shoe print and vehicle tyre mark evidence recovered from scenes of crime

SICAR 6, the latest version of Foster & Freeman’s evidence management system, has been extended to handle tyre marks as well as shoe prints. The current version runs on a PC under Windows XP.

Facilities provided by SICAR 6 include:

• archiving records of suspects’ shoes, with shoe prints
• archiving records of shoe prints recovered from scenes of crime
• archiving records of vehicle tyre marks recovered from scenes of crime
• matching suspects’ shoes to scene of crime shoe prints
• associating crimes with identical shoe print evidence
• identifying shoes from shoe prints recovered from crime scenes
• identifying vehicle tyres from tread marks recovered from crime scenes
• networking multiple workstations for data sharing
• providing statistical reports of frequency of occurrence

Pattern coding – a simple technique for comparing shoe prints and tyre tread marks
SICAR adopts a simple coding technique to characterize tyre treads and shoe prints which forms the basis of many of the database search and match operations. The process, which takes no longer than a minute or two, enables the operator to create a coded description of the pattern of a shoe sole or tyre tread by identifying elemental pattern features such as lines, waves, zigzags, circles, diamonds and blocks etc each of which bears a unique code. This is a straightforward selection process, as each type of elemental pattern is displayed, with variants, for the operator to choose from.

SICAR 6 may be used as a stand alone system or with SoleMate, or TreadMate, reference databases of shoes and vehicle tyres, respectively.