In 1994, the Fort Wayne Police Department became involved in community policing and their Model of Community Oriented Policing and Community Oriented Government (COP/COG) gained national acclaim. The author describes how the police department, through its’ COP/COG program, gained crucial citizen support for using the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) to obtain a desktop version of the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS). Citizen support was crucial because the police department had to obtain two LLEBGs in 1 year and devote all of the funds to obtaining the system. The remainder of the article discusses how the new technology is helping reduce crime in the city. Burglary was becoming a problem within the city and the new AFIS is helping to reduce burglaries by quickly and accurately processing fingerprints and matching them to known suspects. AFIS is also being used to solve old homicide cases and to identify missing or lost persons. Parents are also using the new technology to register their children’s fingerprints. Overall, in Fort Wayne, IN, the use of AFIS is considered a boon to the city and well worth the money and effort it took to obtain it.