My First 'Hit'

Nothing is more rewarding than a young and enthusiastic CSI identifying their first suspect. One colleague of mine was so proud he framed his first 'Ident'. I didn't go that far, but I do remember my first ident and the Job well, it's kind of a Rite of Passage into the forensic world.

I had completed my induction training and after having a few months shadowing an experienced CSI, I had my training wheels removed and I was free to tackle as much volume crime as you could shake a synthetic bristled stick at!

A small business premises located on an industrial estate had it's fax machine and a laptop stolen from the reception area during trading hours, the officers who had attended asked that a member of our team come along and 'throw a bit of powder around'. I turned up an hour or so later to examine the scene. Basically our suspect had merely walked into the reception area, taken the items off the receptionists desk and walked out. The desk was behind a partitioned wall and had glass sliding hatch, the Receptionist told me she usually keeps the hatch shut to cut out the noise from the factory across the road so our suspect must have handled the hatch.

'Great!' thought I, nice smooth shiny surface and a definite area handled by offender. So off I go with my powder twizzling a brush like an expert and I develop about 12 marks off both surfaces. 'Wonderful!', but then my brain kicked in, this is a Public area it may be hard to prove, but wait!, there is CCTV evidence available, 'Brilliant!'. The CCTV had yet to be downloaded from the system so was still available for me to view, so I sat and watched as our man walks in, takes a quick look around in that suspicious shady manner that only scroats can pull off, places both hands sideways on the glass hatch(exactly the position I had just recovered marks from) and pulls the thing open, grabs his swag and legs it out the door. Within the week our chappie is identified and away we go with charging, bailing, sentencing. Yours truly doesn't even make the stand to give evidence in court as our suspect goes guilty under the weight of evidence against him. So one bad guy in jail and my first notch on my brush.

Looking back, I wish all my jobs were that easy and all offenders were just as stupid. Although I was immensely proud of myself at the time, I now realise that any half trained Monkey with a brush could have solved that one.