The record's creator is honored by law officers, who use it to help identify criminal suspects.
By ALISA ULFERTS
Published June 9, 2004
TALLAHASSEE - With a few key strokes, Ed Ricord can name the most popular tattoo in the Florida prison system, how many prisoners have "Mom" tattoos and how many have tattoos on their buttocks.
He can even tell you how many have "Mom" tattooed on their buttocks.
The information is part of a database Ricord compiled for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement of the 372,644 tattoos on current and former state prisoners.
Combined with other information in the database, such as height, hair color, eye color and age, law enforcement can easily search for possible suspects spotted with distinctive tattoos.
Police love it so much that Ricord was honored Tuesday with the Davis Productivity Award, given to state employees showing exceptional innovation.
But the database is so new - it's been up and running for a few months - that FDLE officials could not say whether any arrests had been made because of it.
Ricord, 53, created the database after fielding numerous inquiries about tattoos on criminal suspects.
"This was a cheap way of not spending any money and making something useful for investigators," Ricord said.
Ricord said the tattoos come in all shapes and sizes and appear in places that might make you squirm.
For the record, the most popular tattoo among Florida prisoners is the cross. "Mom" tattoos are favored by 543 current and former prisoners. And 812 have tattoos on their buttocks.
But only one has "Mom" tattooed on his butt, a guy from Tampa.
