Have a Tattoo or Walk With a Limp? The Police May Know

clipped from www.nytimes.com Have a Tattoo or Walk With a Limp? The Police May Know Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times Inside the New York Police Department's Real Time Crime Center, analysts search databases for information gleaned from arrests, accident reports and victim complaints. By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT He was discovered by the police around 8 p.m. Tuesday, lying in the snow in Harlem, unresponsive. The police did not know who he was or how he got there. Then detectives noticed a word — bhood — tattooed on his arm. Within minutes, they had the man’s name and a contact number, and in short time, even his history of seizures. Most of the information was contained in a Police Department database, where a description of the man’s tattoo was recorded in 2008 after his arrest. The person in the database was a perfect match for the man in Harlem. The tattoo database is one of dozens kept by the Police Department in its technological information hub, the Real Time Crime Center,