Crime Scene Practice (UK)

twh-forensics:

It is worth noting that unlike the US, the UK’s forensics laboratories are part of the private sector since 2010. To quote Douglas Adams; “This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”

So, how does a crime scene work?

Not like on the telly box with that CSI bloke Grissom, I’ll tell you that for free.

First off, the police very rarely enter a crime scene, and if they do, (attractive detectives in well fitted suits and pencil skirts included) they need to be suited and booted just like everyone else.

Also, this is the most infuriating thing I’ve ever seen:

PEOPLE PICKING THINGS UP WITH A SCREWED UP GLOVE.

Just no.

Much like the golfer and his trousers in the famous joke, CSI guys always wear two pairs of gloves, in case we get a hole in one. It also prevents contamination, since the inner gloves will have your DNA on them; a second pair prevents this.

What needs packaging then? EVERYTHING. Every single thing at a crime scene gets packaged, and the police budget determines what goes to the lab for testing.

Also, everything we’ve used to collect evidence also goes in a bag. 15 cigarette butts need 15 pairs of tweezers, then you need 30 bags. Your suit, gloves, shoe covers, mask are all also packaged.

For more information on packaging evidence, message me with a specific object you want packaging. There’s bags, boxes and tubes of all shapes and sizes.

And then there’s the logs and reports.

Every CSI fills out at LEAST 3 bits of paper for every scene.

Sketch.

It doesn’t matter if you’re shit at art, you draw that damn crime scene. And it’s from an aerial view, so no fancy shading or 3D stuff. Blocks. Circles. Stick man corpse. (Only draw if corpse actually present at scene) Whatever. Steps? individual little rectangles. How do I draw a sofa? Rectangles. What about this stool? Draw it as the shape it is. What if it’s not to scale? Don’t worry son, you’re measuring everything anyway, and writing those measurements down. Also, you’re taking pictures of everything small with little rulers next to them. At least three of them. (We’ll get to that in a minute) Do I have to draw everything? YES. FOR THE LOVE OF SMEG. Even that small stain on the floor by the coffee table. What, that blood stain? NO. IT’S A RED STAIN, DON’T CALL IT BLOOD BECAUSE IF IT’S KETCHUP THEN THE LAWYERS WILL EAT YOUR TESTIMONY FOR BREAKFAST AND ALL YOUR EVIDENCE IS REJECTED AND IF YOU PACKAGED THE CONCLUSIVE BIT OF EVIDENCE THEN THAT MOTHER HUBBARD IS WALKING AWAY FROM THAT TRIAL. But yes, you have to draw it.

Next bit of paper is the photography log.

I personally, hate this fucker.

Every time you take a picture, you have to write down the JPEG number, the photo number and what the picture is of.

E.G.

1                 JPEG-0103           Shot of room from NE corner

2                 JPEG-0104           Shot of room from NW corner

3                 JPEG-0105           Shot of room from SW corner (Officer                                                       Dickhead in shot throwing up gang sign                                                     and generally being a wanker)

4                 JPEG-0106          Shot of room from SW corner (Officer
                                               Dickhead no longer in shot)

…………

87               JPEG 0189        Novelty dildo on bedside table(Long shot)

88               JPEG 0190        Novelty dildo on bedside table (Med shot)

89               JPEG 0191        Novelty dildo on bedside table (close up)

And so on and so forth for every single picture you take. If a picture goes bad, write it down anyway, why it’s wrong, and don’t include it in your first exhibit (which for me is CHY-1, the collection of all your photographs)

N.B. The three letters in your exhibit number are your initials. So for pro wrestler Rob Van Dam, his first exhibit would be RVD-1. If you don’t have a middle name, add a letter. CSI Gary stuck a Z on the end (so it spelt GAZ), my friend Emma used her nickname and I added the last letter of my surname.

N.B. (2) It’s never too dark for pictures. If you’re a photographer, you know all about aperture size and exposure and shit. My university’s head CSI bloke, Gary had this conversation once.

OFFICER DICKHEAD: Can you take a picture to show how dark it is?

CSI GARY: Well, how dark do you want it?

OFFICER DICKHEAD: What?

CSI GARY: Never mind.

The point is, even if you can’t get much natural light, good quality photography is still possible.

The third, but not necessarily final bit of paper is the actual log itself. This is where a CSI writes down everything, and I mean everything, he/she/they do, the time they did it, and the time they finished it. Here’s what one looks like:

12:00 Arrived at scene.

12:01 Established cordon and common approach path.

12:02 Began photography

13:22 Finished photography

13:23 Went for a wee

13:25 Returned from wee

13:26 Officer Dickhead arrives at scene

13:27 Noticed strange smell

13:28 Began collection of evidence

13:29 Cigarette end packaged

13:30 Strange smell sourced to Officer Dickhead- he’s eating a Pot Noodle.

13:31 Novelty Dildo packaged

13:32 Had coffee break

13:40 Returned from coffee break

13:41 Requested extra MacGuffins

13:42 Packaged doodad

13:43 Went for another wee

13:49 Returned from wee

13:50 Checked progress of MacGuffins from CS Manager- No MacGuffins available

13:51 Slapped Officer Dickhead for spilling Pot Noodle on crime scene

And so on, and so forth, until that entire crime scene is wrapped up entirely.

So when you see CSI on TV and there’s plain clothes detectives fannying about with scrunched up gloves while some white suited bloke absently dusts for prints and leans on everything and isn’t wearing shoe covers, cops are wandering in and out and leaning on everything and generally buggering up the entire crime scene, you’re watching dramatised lies.

If there’s photography going on, there’s no packaging going on. Everything needs to be captured in situ before it’s moved. Also, imagine how frustrated CSI Gary would get if the thing he’s taking a picture of ends up in the evidence box before he’s even got near it. He’d go spare.

Every Crime Scene has several roles that need to be filled out:

• The First Officer Attending is the first member of the Five-O to get there. They get to help the public if necessary, then they need to preserve the scene to ensure nobody enters without permission. Which means a lot of standing around. Fun job. There are other police at the scene, usually maintaining the cordon, keeping nosy journalists away and pratting about annoying the Forensics team (see reference to Officer Dickhead in the photography section)
• The Crime Scene Manager manages the crime scene. As if it wasn’t already explicit. Clue’s in the title. It’s the CSM’s job to organise everyone, give them jobs to do, and make sure they’re doing them. Also known as the Senior Investigative Officer (SIO) But that title has fallen out of use after the privatisation of Forensic Science.
• The Exhibits Officer is the person in charge of collecting and noting down all the exhibits. They get their own special area to work out of, which may be a garage or shed attached to the property involved in the crime, or it might just be a van and a gazebo.
• Crime Scene Investigators encompass all of the guys in white suits doing the dirty work. Also known as CSEs (Crime Scene Examiners) or SOCOs (Scene of Crime Officer). Again, SOCO has fallen out of use.
• Forensic Scientists are the specific experts that get dragged out of bed at silly o’clock to do their investigation and get paid extortionate amounts of money for the privilege. They tend to be lab scientists, but if their presence is required at the scene, then to the scene they go. These include people like Archaeologists, Ballistics Experts, Fire Investigators, Toxicologists, etc.
• Paramedics. Medics? At a crime scene? Yes. Not all crime scenes are murder scenes, you nelly. First order of business is preservation of life. If there are any human bodies at a scene, then the medics are called down to ensure they’re actually dead. Even if you think they’re dead, you have to make sure. Lawyers are absolute twats when it comes to protocol, and it has been known for CSMs to request medics to confirm a scene void of life when the only human remains present was a severed head, just to avoid a particularly dim witted lawyer going “But did you make sure the scene was void of life?”

CSIs don’t have an opinion.

If you ask one ‘what do you think happened’, don’t be surprised if they sigh, ignore you, give a sarcastic response or just refuse to comment. They’re scientists. They might have an idea of what went on at a scene, but they keep it to themselves. A red stain is referred to as a red stain. If it’s blood, yay, evidence. If it’s not, then yay, evidence. If you make an assumption and it turns out to be wrong, you’ll get hauled into court and your evidence rejected.

It is not our job to catch the culprit. It is our job to find evidence that the police can use to catch the culprit.

Then there’s presumptive tests. They don’t necessarily give 100% accuracy. With certain tests, a false positive can be mistaken for the real thing. E.G. Luminol has the same reaction to blood as it does to bleach. For further information, google presumptive tests for X and look at the false positives. Spraying Luminol everywhere and going “oooh, blood!” is making assumptions. Also, coating an entire crime scene in a presumptive test can destroy other forms of evidence such as fingerprints. Which is annoying. As hell. Don’t be that chump pretending his Luminol spray is a flamethrower and he’s in the Vietnam war.

On the subject of fingerprints, there are many different types of printing powder and brush, all of which have different applications, so if you’re unsure of what brush/powder combo to use on a surface, hit up the ask box.

There are also several techniques that can be used to develop the prints for use as evidence. If tape isn’t possible, there’s iodine developing, a brilliant method involving superglue, but those are lab things, not at-the-scene things.

I think that’s more or less everything. I may have missed something, but we’re all human so I think I can be forgiven.

If you have any specific requests for what goes on, then hit up the ask box, for lab stuff, specific scene stuff or other general queries about things like decomp rates, the legal process etc.

I’m not a pathologist; questions about what can murder people are best aimed towards a doctor since I don’t have that level of knowledge about the human body. (Although I do have a pathology module this year, so give it time)

Hope this has been helpful!

-C

(via aguidetodeduction)