A Small Shower

It's 10 minutes from clocking off time on the Friday night late shift, I'm checking all the open logs to see if anything drastic is coming in that might require my services before I slip out the door. One of the worst things about being on call is getting the key into the door of your house only for the phone to ring beckoning you back to work. The list doesn't reveal any immediate cause for concern, there is a big job going off in one the High St Pubs known for Drug Dealing, but they won't need me there surely? otherwise they would have let me know in the planning stages (ahem!).

To be fair, initially there would have been no requirement for me, but in between 30 odd officers bursting through the doors and climbing walls of the local, somebody threw a firearm into the beautifully landscaped bush that is the focal point of the beer garden. So halfway home the phone rings (after pulling over safely and turning the engine off) I answer the call and soon I'm driving in the opposite direction back to work.

At the scene, most of the remaining clientèle are being searched for contraband and are leaving for another Pub, the bush in the Beer Garden is dramatically cordoned off with Police Tape. I am informed by the Sergeant heading the raid that Firearms Officers are tied up with other incidents across the force and may be a while. I can't do anything with the Gun until it is made safe by Firearms, so I start racking up some photos in the dark, this usually takes a while in the low lighting conditions but I had the comfort of not being rushed so I ambled along at my own pace. Once that's finished, still no sign of Firearms and I am informed again that it going to be a few hours. I look at the sky to see if the weather is going to be a problem, it's a beautiful summer's night, not a cloud in the sky and I'm walking around with a t-shirt on and I've still got a bit of a sweat on, not a chance of rain ruining my scene, but ever the professional I diligently place a large plastic bag over the gun, you know, just to be safe.

So I have done as much as I can, the pub is now closed and just a few officers remain so I take the opportunity to have a kip on one of the chairs in the 'snug', then a free game of pool courtesy of the worried landlord. A dog handler and his drugs dog arrives to do a walk through of the pub and garden to find any discarded un-dealt drugs. From my comfy seat I wave a half-hearted 'If you find anything give us a shout and I'll do some photos for you', I remain in my comfy seat in the snug awaiting Firearms so I can finish the job. Nothing more is found by dog and handler, unfortunately no one had informed him about the firearm in the bush, until after he let his dog relieve himself in the garden! I jump up from my comfy seat, the Dog Handler looks sheepish, it's not his fault really, someone should be preserving the scene properly instead of sleeping on the job!(although there was an officer guarding the beer garden). Luckily for me though my professional scene securing skills meant all we needed was a fresh plastic bag instead of a new gun. There was no rain only a small shower.

Attach of Clones.

Every now and then our department gets it's very own, fresh out of the box, wet behind the ears Probationer Constable attached to our office for a day or two to learn the ways of CSI. Without an air of cynicism about them and overwhelming puppy-like enthusiasm they lap up our every word as gospel and vow never to contaminate a scene for as long as they wear the blue cloth. It's useful to 'get' to them at this stage in their career before they get influenced by the more experienced cynical weather-worn Officers.

Whenever I'm preaching to the probationers, I drill into them, please do not listen to anyone else but my colleagues and I in forensic matters, because, and lets not beat around the bush here, a lot of Officers on the street haven't a clue! If you have ever seen those fly-on-the-wall programmes that follow Officers around the streets, you'll notice that barely any of them put a pair of gloves on before, picking up the bloodied knife, searching the car or bagging up stolen property in fact those that do could be counted on a single gloveless hand. If you are ever near my house when these shows are on (not that I make a habit of watching them) you will hear a high pitched scream along the lines of 'Put some bloody gloves on!!'

This may sound like a trivial moan, but if you knew how much work actually goes into enhancing, lifting, scanning/photographing, examining and identifying those marks, then perhaps Officers may think twice about pawing their dirty mitts all over our scenes. I appreciate that when responding to some scenes the dynamic element sometimes puts other priorities first and that's understandable, but if you do handle something then just 'fess up, it just makes the process even easier, yes we may have a little giggle at your expense but it's all for the greater good.

Now I know you are taught in Training School not to wear gloves because you may wipe marks off the surface, but this is crap advice, your own fingerprints will either do the same or overlay the existing mark making them unusable. My advice is wear gloves and handle everything carefully and where possible don't touch it at all.

Join me next week when I'll be teaching grannies to suck eggs.

Cradle Snatchers

A bit of Crime Prevention advice for you all today. I am sick to death of examining cars that have had Sat Navs stolen from within. Sat Navs at the moment are the Swag De-Jour, mainly because they are easy to steal and are in high demand at low local junkie prices.

If you have a Sat Nav, don't advertise the fact by having a you cradle suckered to the windscreen, don't think you are being clever by taking it out if the cradle and hiding it in the glovebox or under the seat. Local scroates may not be on front pages of Mensa Monthly but they are not stupid, unfortunately some members of the public clearly are.

So if you are one of the many drivers incapable of reading an A-Z or a consumer of the must have in car gadgets then do me and my many colleagues a favour when alighting from your vehicle, remove your cradle, wipe off the sucker mark and take you Sat Nav with you!

(Can you tell I spent most of today looking at car windscreens)

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!