Due to fingerprint scanners becoming ubiquitous on smartphones these days, law enforcement is having a harder time trying to gain access to a suspect’s phone as they cannot legally force them to give it up. However it certainly has not stopped them from trying because that’s what police in Florida have recently done.
According to reports, police in Florida attended the funeral of the person that they shot, but it wasn’t so much to pay their respects but rather it was an attempt to gain access to the corpse where they tried to use the corpse’s fingerprints to try and unlock his phone. The man who was shot dead was Linus F. Phillip where according to Victoria Armstrong, his fiancee, “I just felt so disrespected and violated.”
According to the back story, the police spotted a car with illegally tinted windows and went to speak to the driver who was Phillip. They then claimed to smell marijuana coming from the car where they then tried to detain him, but he jumped into the driver’s seat and drove away where one of the officers, who was trapped halfway in the car, shot him.
This is actually not the first time that we’re hearing about police trying to unlock phones using corpses. It was reported last month that this is apparently pretty common practice, although it seems to have mixed success.
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