- Even though the Footwear & Tire Section is housed in the Tampa Bay Regional Operations Center’s laboratory, all FDLE Operations Centers with laboratories will accept and arrange for transfer of evidence for footwear and tire impression examinations.
- An entire vehicle can be submitted for comparison and is the preferred standard for comparison. Since this may not always be possible, submitting the tires on the rims removed from the vehicle is the next best option. If physical tires are not able to be collected, standards may be utilized.
- Having suspect’s shoes or tires is not a requirement to submit items for analysis to the Footwear & Tire Section. It is possible to determine a potential make/model of a footwear or tire from submitted photographs or secondary recovery methods (lifts/casts/collection of the item). This may be useful as an investigative lead.
- The ideal case submission would contain the subject’s actual shoes or tires, properly taken photographs at the crime scene and any secondary recovery of those impressions (gel lifts, casts, adhesive lift or the physical item).
- Properly photographed impressions should be taken using a leveled tripod, with a scale at the same depth as the impression (if 3 dimensional), utilizing different light angles, focusing on the impression and having the impression fill the frame of the camera (no wide-angle lenses). The scale should include any identifying markers: i.e. 1, 2, 3, A, B, C. Having the identifying markers visible on the scale allows the analysts to correspond the photographs to any secondary recovery method with those same markings.
- When submitting photographs on a CD/DVD, analysts will use examination quality photographs first and will not examine overall photographs unless all impressions have been eliminated from the submitted standards or no examination quality photographs were taken.
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