FBI – What We Do

 

By Special Agent Bobby Bureau
July14, 2009

Editor’s Note: We are always looking for ways to inform parents of programs that will help them raise their children. Well we found one it is called “Special Agent Bobby Bureau”. We will be joining him to give you tips for kids of all ages. The best way to tell you about this agent is to let him tell you himself.

The Kids’ Page is designed for children and their parents to learn more about the FBI through age-appropriate games, tips, stories and inter actives. We also introduce you to our working dogs and show how FBI special agents and analysts investigate cases. First, can you help Special Agent Bobby Bureau get in disguise for his undercover assignment? He’s depending on you. You have to visit the sight to sign up as a special agent.

Today’s  we talk “What We Do.”

We would like to know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com

We strongly recommend that you visit this sight with your child. This sight we rate a 10.

 

I am a lawyer for the FBI and I work for the legal department. A law is like a very important rule. When someone breaks a law, we call it a crime. When Congress makes a law, they decide which government agency will investigate when the law is broken.

Many years ago, the FBI investigated crimes like bank robbery, kidnapping, and the theft of cars that are taken from one state to another. Today, there are over 350 violations of the law that the FBI investigates. We can’t list them all here because there are so many, but we break them down into a few categories. The FBI investigates violent crime, organized crime, white collar crime, terrorism, foreign counterintelligence, civil rights, and applicant matters.

The FBI has many ways of solving these crimes and finding the criminals. One of them is through fingerprint identification.

Fingerprints are a great way to tell people apart because everyone’s fingerprints are unique. This means that no two people in the world have the same fingerprints! Other ways of identifying people (hair color, height, weight, and eye color) may change as a person gets older, but fingerprints stay the same.

There are over 250 million sets of fingerprint records on file. If all of the fingerprint cards on file were stacked on top of one another, they would equal one hundred and thirty three stacks, each the size of the Empire State Building! Finding space to keep all of these fingerprint cards is difficult! This is one of the reasons that the FBI is now putting the cards in digital format so that the images can be stored on computers. All fingerprint cards at the FBI are eight-inch squares (a little smaller than a piece of notebook paper) and are thinner than a piece of cardboard. The FBI gets over 37,000 of these fingerprint cards each day, seven days a week! Thirty-two percent of these cards now come to the FBI as digital images. Here’s an example of a FBI applicant fingerprint card. You can click on the picture  at FBI Kids sight and print it out.

Not all fingerprint files are of criminals. Some records are civil prints. Civil prints are taken of people who work for the government or apply for a job with the government.

Have you ever had your fingerprints taken? It’s a great idea to do this, because if you ever wander off or get lost, your parents will have a record of your fingerprints to give to the police. The faster your parents can get this information to the police, the sooner you will be recognized and safely returned to your family.
Remember – fingerprints are unique. Not even identical twins have the same fingerprints. Take a minute to look at your own fingertip and notice all the ridges and swirls. Now, look at your parents’ fingertips. Can you tell the difference? Take a minute to look at the seven different fingerprint patterns that are used to identify people. Go to FBI Kids and you can compare your own fingerprints to these patterns and see which one looks most like your own!

Next Week, we will talk about: DNA 

Source: FBI Kids