Late Start.

Ooops it's been over a month since I posted last. I could say it was because I'm very busy being a dynamic go-getting CSI who puts his job before his home life and drinks straight whiskey until he passes out, just to block the horrendous crap he has to deal with daily which is sending him spiraling out of control and threatening his marriage . But the truth is more a combination of apathy and new Xbox games for christmas (yes I am a big kid and should know better).

Anyway, work wise it's been a steady year so far, but nothing to get excited about, although I still keep leaving expensive torches at peoples houses and luckily they have all been honest enough to ring me to tell me. I think the next time I lose one it coming out of my own pocket and I'll have to use the glow from my mobile phone to search for fingerprints.

So a belated Happy New Year to all and standby for more forensic whimsy in 2008!

Happy Christmas

Well, I have managed to keep this blog going longer than I thought and that is down to you good people dropping by every once in a while and leaving nice comments. So Happy Christmas to you and yours and I hope enjoy yourselves whatever your plans are.

Thankfully I'm not working this Christmas, so I'll miss out on the inevitable Suicides, crying kids (whose presents have been nicked by Billy Burglar) and the droves of Officers who say 'Oh!, I didn't know you worked on Christmas Day!, can you just check this.....'. Go away I'm trying to get all my work done so I can sneak off early!!

Anyway until the New Year have a good 'un and if you are working have a 'q' un! HAPPY CHRISTMAS!

Low Copy Number

A judge has ordered an immediate review of LCN DNA following the Omagh Bomb verdict. For those unaware of what LCN (Low Copy Number) DNA is, it is basically a super-sensitive technique that can extract DNA from areas touched or handled by someone, that sample is then amplified, a bit like photocopy enlarging, until a usable profile is obtained. This profile is nowhere near as accurate as a full profile obtained from something like Saliva or Blood which would have a discriminating factor of 1 in a Billion of being anyone else, instead a LCN profile can give you a much more ambiguous result giving you a huge list of names of who it could be instead of who it most likely is. This list of names could be whittled down by Detectives based on geography, offender description or maybe flag up the name of a known suspect.

I would liken this type of evidence to that of a fairly tenuous eye witness account, it gives you an idea of who it might be but not enough to be used as evidence. In general Policing terms it's better known as intelligence and not something that you would base your prosecution on. I'm not sure in what form this LCN evidence was used in the Omagh case but to base your whole case around it would be foolish and at most circumstantial.

It would be a shame however if the FSS withdrew this technique in future as it is a very useful intelligence tool. I have had some great results in previous jobs where an offender wasn't known and just being given a name has opened up so many other lines of enquiry and other evidence gathered has come back to these people. On the plus side at least some of the clueless Police Officers will stop asking for us to swab every door handle in sight on the off chance that the force may fork out a couple of grand to process them.

Negatives

So there I was called out in the middle of the night to an Arson attack at a dwelling on the 7th floor of a block of flats. By the time I got there the Fire Brigade had made some initial enquiries and it turns out it was caused by the occupant who had be suffering from mental issues of late and this was his latest episode.

During the investigation the now homeless occupant turns up with a full and frank admission of starting the fire himself in the bedroom. Along with the Fire Officers we confirmed the seat of the fire in the bedroom, there were no other signs of forced entry (other than the size 9s of the first Fireman) or anything out of the ordinary apart from all his possessions now being a nice shade of black.

All that was required of me at this stage was photographs of the scene. This may sound like a quick task, but when it's pitch black outside and all the walls inside are pitch black the rules of photography change somewhat making it a more laborious task. In order to record all of the detail in a darkened room the use of flash is not enough as it creates as many shadow areas as it illuminates. So using timed exposures of between 15 secs and 1 Minute on a tripod mounted camera with fill in flash extends the average shot from a 125th of a second to a few minutes per shot. There will probably be at the very least four shots per room in a flat with six rooms so the total time of this type of job can take a good couple of hours.

Imagine my horror then when I had finally taken the last shot to find I had no film in the camera! There were a couple of officers still waiting for me to finish, hiding my mistake quite well I say 'Just changing films, got a couple of final shots to make and I'll be done.' Luckily at this stage it was very early morning and the sun was starting to poke itself over the horizon, so I quickly fly around all the rooms using the camera and flash handheld, five minutes later I have the shots I need, I pack up and leave. A week or so later the photos arrive on my desk and all things considered they didn't turn out too bad, not my best work but a lucky escape nonetheless. Thank god for Digital!

Negative.

Unlike those American TV shows, where an handsomely rugged male can walk into a Crime Scene and spot the smallest piece of case-winning evidence from 30 yards causing the suspect to break down into a full on reluctant confession, the reality is sometimes less sensational and we often end up empty handed and bow our heads and shake it slightly with apologetic sorrow and say ' I'm sorry there is nothing further we can do.' This isn't always the end of an investigation, there may be other lines of enquiries which the officer will deal with.

The reaction to this news always provokes wide range of responses, some people are very understandable and appreciate you've done all you can, others will expect it and would have usually uttered the immortal line of 'Your wont find anything mate!' as I walk in the door. Some, those that live and breathe the aforementioned TV shows, are absolutely disgusted that you haven't turned up with 3 other colleagues shining pretty blue lights, swabbing anything that fails to move and given the inside of their house a nice coat of silver. This is usually followed by the idiot mantra of 'You would do it if it was a Murder!', that's because a persons life is more valuable than an Elizabeth Duke bejewelled gold Clown Necklace.

Sometimes however, you will seize anything just to avoid giving the bad news as some people clearly have the worst luck in the world and your sorrowful apology will be the final nail in the coffin. On one such occasion a house had been broken into, simple insecure point of entry, small tidy search of a few jewellery boxes and off goes the offender his pockets bulging with a few generations jewellery. As I come to end of my examination, it is clear that the offender has been wearing gloves, due to the marks found on most of the things touched. Their wasn't any other useful evidence or a single usable fingerprint developed during the exam, yet I took away a few marks (of very poor quality that would surely cause hysterics at the Fingerprint Lab).

My reason for this deception was clear, this family needed a little bit of hope because they had lost all theirs. The family, a Father and his two Daughters, had been out during the Burglary, at the hospital for a follow up appointment for one Daughter after she had surgery to remove a tumour. The news wasn't good, it had returned, they had stopped off on the way home to visit the cemetery to update their recently deceased wife and mother and then returned home to find the house broken into. Amongst the Jewellery was a wedding ring, as the Father relayed this to me, he begins to cry causing his daughters to do the same. I diligently lift a few 'marks' , explain the possibility of the offender wearing gloves, but state that I will be submitting some mark anyway in case there was more than one offender or for some reason he removed is gloves.

I think they understood the futility of my actions, but they seemed to receive the news well and thanked me for my help. I still don't know if it was the right thing to do, it did help the situation, but I couldn't help thinking that it was a bit of selfish of me to deceive them just to avoid an unpleasant situation.

Project Thyself

Story Time! All forces have their Career Criminals, those that have been in and out of prison as often as we have been in out of the house (to go to work and earn a honest living). Once they have been caught a few times they start to get wise to the sort of evidence they are leaving behind and are twice as careful the next time, thus reducing the amount of times they get caught and increasing their opportunities of ill gotten gains.

During the Summer Hols a year or so ago we had a large spate of Burglaries to Schools on our patch with ceiling mounted projectors being the swag of choice. These particular offences were drawing a blank on anything useful forensic wise, huge woolly glove marks and careful points of entry, so DNA and Fingerprints were sparse or more accurately non existent, we had some decent Footwear marks but without the shoes to compare them to they were useless. Everyone back at the station had their suspicions on who it was and he a local scroat who seen his fair share of cell doors.

I made it my personal mission to identify this chap forensically, not because of my social moral conscience but because I was sick of trying to track down Caretakers during non-term times and arrange convenient times to conduct examinations.

After drawing blanks on another few schools I turn up to a particular school who have been 'done' for the third time in as many weeks. Same story again, tidy point of entry, woolly glove marks all over the place, projector taken and a half decent footwear mark. Although this one was slightly different as a more thorough search of the classroom had been carried out. 'How has he had time to search through here, did the alarm not go off?' I ask the caretaker. 'Well the PIR sensor in here is a bit dodgy and he's sellotaped some paper over it!', 'Has he indeed!' If this had been a cartoon then a bright lightbulb would have appeared above my head as well as Double Helix strands in my huge eyes. See the sellotape had come from the teachers desk, but there were no scissors in sight for cutting, the edges of the tape were rough as if bitten off! So straight to Lab it went, it came back with the profile of the chap we all suspected it and whats more his shoes were match to at least 5 of the other breaks in the area. So it was goodnight from him for at least another term or so.

Change gives the Illusion of Progress

So you may have noticed I have made some changes to the site! As the site is approaching 10,000 hits I thought that is was time for a change to maintain some momentum and take the opportunity to reflect on site itself. You will see I have changed the colours to fall in line with the corporate image of most Police Forces and to add a bit of professionalism.

OK, I am not fooling you with my pseudo management speak, truth be told I am running out of ideas and instead of sitting down and coming up with another insightful, intelligent and witty post I ended up revamping the site a little. As you may have noticed my posting has been a bit sparse of late, but I'm still getting people visiting here each day so I must be doing something right.

So if you have been visiting the site recently in the vain hope that I have posted another nugget of pure Blog gold then thank you and sorry for the lack of activity. I will be continuing to post as often as possible, but if you have any suggestions on what sort of things you would like me to post then drop me a line. If you are a CSI in the UK or indeed anywhere and you want to contribute with your own stories then let me know I'll be more than happy to oblige.

Finally if you have linked to my blog and I have not reciprocated then I apologise, drop me an email or leave a comment and I'll deal with it. Also my links section is looking a bit slim so if you want me to add a link let me know.