Police clearance/FP unclassifiable twice

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Caramuru

Registered Users (C)
I am scheduled for interview on March 24th (in NYC). Today I received a Case File Review Notice asking to bring requested document saying:

"Your fingerprints were found to be unclassifiable twice. You will need to provide police clearances for each place you have lived in the past 5 years. You will need to contact the police departments in the places you have lived to get these clearances. When a state report is available, state report is preferred over a report from a local police department."

1. I have lived in the same address for the last 13 years. Where do I go to get the police clearance? Is it the nearest precinct that covers my area? Or the NYC police headquarters or where exactly?

2. How long does it take to obtain police clearance?

3. Do I have to take another FP with the police? I already did the FP for FBI clearance twice and I don't know what went wrong. Is this common?

4. Where can I obtain a "state report" which is preferred over local police?

5. Will there be any other problem in the actual interview for lack of FBI FP clearance, any delays occurring in the final approval of citizenship?

Just kind of worried because I wasn't expecting this foul up with FP and that maybe this will affect the processing of my application.

I filed N400 in October 2008.

Any comment or answer to my queries greatly appreciated.
 
Not common - welcome to the "rare club".
Contra to common belief, finger prints do change for certain people (I assume yours were clear prints), thus not even a positiv match can't be found. That's why they want a statement from your local police.
 
Contact your local and/or state police and request a background check report that shows you have no records on file. They can usually provide you results fairly quickly. Bring these results to the interview. It's really only a formality since your prints weren't readable.
 
Just found out from a friend of a friend that she too had to get a police clearance as they couldn't use her prints. She had her FP taken twice. But she was told about it only at the time of her interview, which she passed by the way. She had to go to the NY Police Hqs in downtown NY to apply for clearance which she got after a week's wait. Consequently her oathtaking was delayed for a quite a while.
I can't understand the problem because how come when I applied for green card I was fingerprinted and I suppose I was cleared at that time.
 
Caramuru said:
I can't understand the problem because how come when I applied for green card I was fingerprinted and I suppose I was cleared at that time.
Click to expand...

It could be that your skin was too dry this time around for prints to be readable. That's why it's suggested to use some hand cream a few days before FP to improve chances of passing FP.
 
So today I went to the NYC Police Hqs. building located behind City Hall for a police clearance. They call it a "Good Conduct Certificate". It costs $30 and takes 2 weeks to get it. Payment only by credit card or money order. It took me two hours to get processed including, yes another fingerprinting. I told the people there that the reason I was there was because the FBI couldn't classify the two sets of prints that they took, whatever that means. (Just be warned those going to this police office, the staff there were not that nice...and to think that we were paying customers. Oh well...
 
I had the same notice regarding unclassifiable fingerprints. It was because of dry skin, my fingers were all cracked. It is advisable to apply lot of moisturizing lotion and prep your hand two weeks before you go for finger printing. Anyways I had taken the regional police certificate (for the past 5 year) for the interview. The IO insisted that I could have gotten the state report (where it was available). However the IO was kind enough and they cleared my interview after consultation with another IO. I am now waiting for the Oath letter. Hope for the best. Good luck.
 
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