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.
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5 comments:
I think our SMT would have been screaming blue murder after the first few. They would have made sure he was locked up for some random crime and a s.18 conducted with officers fully briefed on the footware to look for whilst there and then seize it as evidence of another crime once they found them.
Good skills doing it your way though. It gets rid of the "someone must have borrowed my trainers" excuse. Its a bit harder to borrow someones spit!!
Good work!
You can't beat a spot of lateral thinking..... I've got a job on that's turned into a DNA snowball, rolling from hill to hill with nothing but "Excluded" at every turn. There's an awful lot of folks out there who, without DNA, would have been banged up for this one, since they fit the old Means Motive and Opportunity tests so well. Try telling that to the Daily Mail !
Nice one. Bet you're feeling pleased with yourself. Quite rightly too.
:-)
I know who...... :)
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