Kansas City, Mo. ? A gadget being tested by Kansas authorities will allow officers to take fingerprints in the field during traffic stops, routine interviews, homicide investigations – any situation where they need to quickly check someone’s prints against those of people arrested in the past.

Over the next year, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation will use local police agencies to test 60 of the biometric devices as part of the KBI’s $3.6 million upgrade of its fingerprint database.

The statewide database, also known as the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, contains more than 10 million fingerprints, taken from people arrested in Kansas, and also links to the FBI’s database.