How does investigators wearing gloves or using cloth doesn’t erase the fingerprints, whereas criminals erase it by merely cleaning the object.

Question

All the knowledge is based on the movies / tv series, but most of them show such scenarios.

In: 6

Answer 1

To get rid of fingerprints, they rub back and forth. That smudges the prints beyond recognition, or cleans them entirely. Simply touching it isn’t enough.

The point of the gloves isn’t even necessarily to keep the prints intact, it’s to ensure no new fingerprints get on the evidence. Otherwise every forensic investigation would end up with the detective as the main suspect. By the time the evidence has been fully investigated, there would likely be an extra dozen sets of prints from various people if we didn’t use gloves or bags. The prints of the criminal would be worthless by then.

Answer 2

The fingerprint is basically an oil residue left on the surface, to “remove” the print all you need to do is smudge it a little so the pattern is unrecognisable, gloves stop a new pattern being laid on top of the existing one. https://youtu.be/FB3Tt2ZLyUQ