By Peggy O'Farrell

/ Enquirer staff writer

"My index finger is fat," Noah Stump, 8, says, studying the chart in front of him. His newly cut Mohawk bristles a little at the observation.

It was fingerprint day at "CSI: McAuley Camp" at McAuley High School in College Hill.

Haley Curtis, Kearie Dailey, Iesha Walker, and volunteer Heather Mello look for whirls, swirls and loops in their own fingerprints during CSI Camp at McAuley High School in College Hill. (Glenn Hartong photo)

The weeklong camp gives students in grades 1-4 a chance to learn about how police use science to catch the bad guys - just like the crime scene investigators on the two CBS shows.

Nicki Brainard, an assistant principal at McAuley, led the camp. "I'm a big fan of the TV show, and I thought it would be fun," she says.

Fingerprinting is a basic tool police use to identify who might have committed a crime, Brainard tells the students.

"Fingerprints are for figuring out if you killed somebody, or what you did," says Becca Davis, who starts fourth grade in the fall.

Most fingerprints come in three basic shapes - whorls, loops and arches.

That's where the graphite comes in.

Under Brainard's direction, the students use pencils to color in a dark square. Then they rub their fingertips over the graphite and touch their fingers to little squares of tape.

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"Smush it down real good," Brainard says.

Next the students transfer the prints from the tape to the chart and start looking for clues.

"Mine are all whorls and loops," Lamar Walter, 9, says. He sounds a little disappointed.

"I have a tented arch!" says Rachael O'Reilly, 7. She is quick to point out that it doesn't mean she's a criminal. "It means I have a special finger."

The chart, just like the one real police officers use, has space for each thumb and finger.

"Which one is my ring finger?" asks Logan Cox, 5.

Celisa Junker, 9, isn't fooled by the pencil work. "Policemen use inky stuff and powder for fingerprints," she says.

But the ink and the powder last too long, Brainard points out, and she'd like them to be reasonably clean when they head home to their parents.

During camp, students also learned about DNA and how to use lip prints to solve crimes, cracking codes and protecting themselves against strangers.

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E-mail pofarrell@enquirer.com