I can't switch off! Everywhere I go I see footwear impressions, in mud on laminate floors, and my mind suddenly goes 'oooooh thats a good 'un' . Sometimes when my Girlfriend and I are out and about I am compelled to point them out and state what type of footwear left it. Dancefloors, shop floors, fields, pavements, doors, pieces of litter on the ground they're bloody everywhere and they never fail to catch my eye. It's the same with fingerprints, I can be in the pub drinking and my eyes will be drawn to any marks on the side of a pint glass and any lull in the conversation brings me straight back to them. I'm not obsessed, it's mostly an unconscious act, I just think my brain is conditioned to react to these images as they are vital to every job I attend.Although, it's not all bad, I know of a Footwear Specialist who works for one of the countries major Forensic Labs who spends so much time in shoe shops that his wife has to drag him out! If thats not the beginning of a strange fetish, I don't known what is. I wonder what other professionals do on their days off, do Anesthesiologists experiment with drugs?, do Dentists go potholing?, forklift drivers rearrange their bookshelves or do Gynecologists............... nope too far.
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When we arrest people for burglary now, we take footwear impressions. My recent experience has been that you take the impression, take it to SOCO, and they tell you what shoe it came from. This is helpful because it saves you looking at the brand name on the shoe you just took the impression from. Sigh...
Surely SOCO are supposed to tell you which scenes they got similar footwear from???
I have linked to you; great Blog, I'm afraid I can't get used to the new name and still call you SOCO as well!
Most like being called SOCO, so don't worry. Thanks for the Link.
At my ex-SOCO office, we started a database of images, both arrested offenders' shoes and impressions from scenes. One of our geekier SOCOs designed an Access program to deal with the images and information. It was out-performing our Crime Scene Unit's very expensive imported shoe impression computer when I left.
I had the same fascination with them, and would spend ages looking at soles when my wife was shopping! Sad, but true. I miss it...
What does SOCO stand for?
Scenes of Crime Officer, It's what most CSIs were called in the UK up until very recently.
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