Scene of the Crime

by Anne Wingate

  The other main exception is that if an officer has grounds to fear for his/her own personal safety, s/he may immediately search any area within the immediate physical control of the suspect for weapons. Often, officers stopping a car and searching the glove box under this exception find drugs instead of a weapon. Almost invariably, an immediate court battle ensues, arguing whether the officer had actual and reasonable cause to search for a weapon or whether the search for the weapon was merely an excuse to search for drugs. Courts have ruled differently in different situations, so this is a wide-open area to consider in writing fiction.

  In real life, it is essential that no officer conduct a search alone. There should always be at least two people to testify as to what was found and who found it. Furthermore, the two people must always search together; it won't do any good, later in court, for Mel to testify that s/he was there when N.E. Boddy found the murder weapon, if Mel was outside or in another room and Boddy is accused of planting the weapon.

  But this isn't a law book. Let's get on to what your character might find, how s/he should treat it and not treat it at the scene, and what can be done with it later in the lab. Always, always, always, remember that this information changes fast, so check with your real jurisdiction, or the closest real one to a fictitious one, at the time you are writing as to what can be done there at that time.

  Identification and crime-scene officers are genial souls, almost always happy to tell you what they're doing and show you around, provided they don't have a call at the moment. (But do be aware that even if you have an appointment, you can't count on the officer being there. Crime takes precedence.)

  Evidence Collection

  For now, let's get on with evidence collection. How do officers collect different items of evidence? What do they do with them after collecting them? In this chapter, we'll discuss collecting and packaging the evidence. In chapter nine, we'll examine what the lab does with the evidence.

  Expect the Unexpected

  The only way an evidence technician can be prepared for anything is to be prepared for everything. Murder happens fast.

  At the very least, an evidence collection kit must contain large, medium and small paper and plastic bags. If they are not preprinted with evidence tags (we'll get to those later), evidence tags can be attached with string or tape. The kit must contain paper coin envelopes, small vials of the type used by pharmacies to dispense tablets, and larger plastic or glass containers with airtight lids. Anything meant to contain liquids should be made of an inert material, so that the eyedropper and/or container will not leave its own chemical trace in the liquid, unless of course the lab already knows about and plans for the chemical trace, as in the case of some prepackaged kits. There should be a supply of cardboard boxes that can be set up to hold larger items; prepackaged kits for gunpowder residue, blood samples and rape analysis; vials with disposable eyedroppers fixed in the lids; dental casting material and equipment (the same stuff the dentist used to get the exact shape your bridge needed to be), and plaster casting material and equipment. Tweezers and scissors are essential. Obviously, the kit must contain evidence tags and the long, yellow preprinted evidence tape to keep people out of the immediate crime scene (although it's usually necessary, if it's a major crime, to post a few patrol officers on the perimeter also).

  Rubber gloves are critical; I once caught pneumococcal pneumonia from a corpse, and in this day of AIDS, anybody who handles bloody items without wearing gloves is clearly suicidal.

  Of course you already know your character will need notebook, pens, pencils, tape measures, a camera and strobe, and plenty of film and batteries.

  It is useful to have several heavy-duty cardboard boxes with pegboard bases, and a number of long, heavy nails to put through the bottom of the pegboard, so that oddly-shaped items may be securely immobilized.

  This kit should be kept at all times in the vehicle that will be used. Each time the kit is used it must be immediately restocked, to be ready for its next use. Obviously, if the vehicle must go into the shop, the kit must be moved to the substitute vehicle. Murder happens fast and it doesn't give the unprepared person time to say "Oops, let me get my stuff together." An officer who isn't prepared to go with no advance warning whatever and spend the next ten hours working a major crime scene, photographing, measuring, charting and collecting upwards of 500 pieces of numbered and labeled evidence, without sending a patrol officer out to an all-night drugstore to get something s/he forgot, isn't prepared at all.

  That doesn't mean your fictional character really has to be that well prepared. Sometimes a lack of preparation may add to the drama of the story—but remember that it also must be consistent with your character or story line. Either the character is perennially forgetful or lazy (like Joyce Porter's Dover), or the character has just finished with one major crime and is too dog-tired to remember to restock instantly.

  Each Item Packaged Separately

  When collecting evidence, the technician must package each item separately. This includes, for example, putting each shoe in a separate labeled evidence bag if a pair of shoes is being collected. If a victim's clothing is being collected, each item of clothing goes in a separate bag. (Yes, that includes each sock. It is appropriate to handle them with tweezers.) It is critical to label each item the moment it is collected, and to make corresponding notes in the technician's notebook immediately. Trusting it to memory and planning to write it up later is extremely stupid; memory cannot be trusted that far, especially by someone who has other things on his/her mind.

  Paper or Plastic?

  How does your character decide whether to use paper or plastic to collect the evidence?

  If the item is likely to be even slightly damp, it must be packaged in paper so that the moisture can continue to evaporate; otherwise, the item is likely to begin to rot. Clothing with blood on it is a special problem. It should not be folded in on itself; rather, it must be spread out and allowed to dry. In Albany, Georgia, where I worked for nearly seven years, this was a big problem for a long time; there were times when we had no usable interrogation rooms because they all were full of bloody clothing drying out. (And one rather hysterical day, one detective ushered a suspect into an interrogation room another detective had just put a suspect shotgun in. Fortunately, the suspect was a rather mild-mannered burglar, and on seeing the shotgun he backed out in a hurry.)

  But we had one unexpected and somewhat serendipitous stroke of luck. One day a city commissioner walked through the city parking garage and saw Doc Luther, head of the crime-scene unit, and me fingerprinting a suspect vehicle. He stopped short. "Don't you have a better place to do that?" he demanded.

  "No, sir, we do not," Doc told him. "Not unless we want to do it outside." (The day was rainy. Fingerprint powder and rain do not combine well.)

  The commissioner asked more questions, and Doc let him have the situation: We had already lost one case in court because we were fingerprinting a car full of stolen property when the suspect walked by. Although in fact the suspect did not touch any of the stolen property at that time, he managed to convince a jury that he did and that was how his fingerprints got there. Even Doc and I had to admit that the suspect had been close enough that he could have touched the property. He mentioned the problem with bloody clothing— which should have been our responsibility, but we had no place to deal with it—drying in interrogation rooms. He explained that the problems were getting worse, as crime in the city expanded at a geometric rate.

  "I'll take care of that," the commissioner said.

  A few months later, we had a nice building at the bottom of the parking lot. It was big enough for us to fingerprint even a large suspect vehicle and to process and store other large evidence. From then on, bloody clothing was dried and stored there.

  If your officer is working in a small jurisdiction, by all means use the problems of small departments. Things can't be done exactly right, and there are tremendous fictional opportunities there.r />
  Nothing with blood on it should ever be packaged in plastic or glass or anything else airtight, unless it is the blood itself and it is put in special vials that already contain a known blood preservative. The laboratories can work easily with dried blood or with properly preserved blood, but not with rotted blood.

  Dry items may be packaged in plastic, although no particular harm is done if they are packaged in paper. Something that may need to be repeatedly examined, such as a pistol, should always be in transparent plastic, so that it can be examined without the police seal being broken. Obviously, any time the seal is broken—for fingerprinting or test-firing—notations should be made on the evidence tag, so that the defense attorney can't question later why there are two or three sets of staple holes.

  Learning to pick things up without damaging fingerprints that might be on them is an art. It generally involves using only the fingertips to pick up items and holding them by edges that are too small to hold prints (see Figure 2-1); there is really no way to learn without practicing. Try it yourself, so as to know the problems your character is facing.

  Let's go on, now, talking for a few paragraphs as if you are your character.

  Once you have succeeded in picking up the item, the next problem is packaging it without rubbing out the fingerprints. If the item is absorbent, there is no problem at all. Those prints aren't going anywhere. They are in the substance, not just on the surface, of the item. However, you must be extremely careful not to touch the items yourself, as even the most casual touch will add more prints. These things are best handled with tweezers at all times.

  If the item is irregularly shaped, there's really little problem, because the protrusions will hold the paper or plastic away from the rest of the surface and keep it from rubbing out prints. But when you have something regularly shaped—a drinking glass, a pane of glass—you may have problems, because plastic will tend to mold around the item and rub out prints. Paper works better, especially ordinary brown paper grocery-type sacks, because they are too stiff to rub out prints unless the item is badly mishandled. In actual practice, Doc and I tended to print small items on the scene whenever possible, and then transport them (if necessary—often the prints were all we needed, and the item could be left at the scene) with fingerprints already protected by tape. With larger, heavier

  items, there is no problem, because these items will be transported in boxes and there is no chance of the boxes' rubbing out prints.

  Of course, with extremely large items, there may also be a problem, because it may be impossible to move the item without touching areas that might hold prints. In that case, it is essential to print the areas that must be touched, then move the item, and then finish the work in the lab. What if the item is outside and it's raining? Then you go crazy for a while. Honestly—I can't provide advice. You just assess the situation and try to do whatever will be least harmful to the evidence, then hope you haven't missed something vital.

  For dramatic purposes, you may decide instead to have your character do whatever is most harmful to the evidence, either by accident, deliberately, or because the situation is so bad it cannot be redeemed.

  Often, detectives brought us pieces of broken glass, holding them carefully by the edges, to have the surfaces printed. In a case like that, generally the detective would lay the glass on the seat beside him in the car on the way in, and hand it to us with a separate evidence tag for us to attach later. This worked well; the car's seat covers were too stiff to damage any prints, and it would take us only minutes to print the item and attach the tag.

  This Glass is Full of—Something

  Now suppose you need to fingerprint a container that is full of an unknown liquid. You will eventually have to get an analysis of the liquid, so you can't just dump it. You can't fingerprint the container with the liquid in it, because examining an item while fingerprinting it involves turning it in different directions to get the light on it at different angles.

  Being able to pick up a glass, cup or bottle by the rim and the angle where the side and the base join—using only your fingertips— and pour the contents into another container takes a lot of practice (see Figure 2-2). But that is the only way to do it. After that, the glass or cup must completely air dry before fingerprinting begins. (No, you should not use a hair dryer on it. The resultant heat and rapid moisture evaporation could harm any remaining fingerprints.) This in turn means that very often it must be transported into the police station with the dregs of the liquid still in it—which means that it must be packaged and transported right side up.

  For collecting some evidence, -there are special kits you can

  buy from suppliers or, sometimes, obtain from the crime lab. To collect blood samples in the preservative jar, simply unscrew the lid, collect the sample with the enclosed eyedropper, and screw the lid down again. The directions that come with the kit tell you which items do and do not need to be refrigerated. (After we got a refrigerator in the lab, many a day Doc, Butch and I stored our lunches in the same refrigerator that might be containing biological samples waiting to be transported to the lab. We were, of course, careful that everything—including lunches and samples—was properly packaged.)

  A rape kit has to be kept refrigerated after use, and it should be transported to the lab as soon as possible. The officer or evidence technician does not personally use the rape kit; rather, s/he takes it to the hospital and turns it over to the examining physician, who will use the kit. (Preferably, the examination will be performed in the presence of a female officer, to cut down on the chain of evidence, unless the officer's presence is too distressing to the victim.) Following the examination, the physician turns the kit back over to the officer. The rape kit contains fine-toothed combs, tapes and vials to collect swabs from several pubic areas, vaginal washings and combings, and loose hairs that might be those of the suspect. These critical bits of evidence are the reason police ask the victim not to bathe until after she has been medically examined; very often the victim will then shower right in the hospital before putting on the fresh clothes she has taken with her. All the clothing she was wearing at the time of the assault and immediately after it will be turned over to the police in hopes that some hair, fiber and/or semen from the assailant remains on it.

  Shoe Prints, Tire Tracks

  Shoe prints and tire tracks are first photographed with a special camera on a frame that points directly down. Because the camera is on a frame, the ratio of the negative to the original (that is, the relationship in terms of size) is known, and the original track can be exactly reproduced in size. After that, the officer should make casts, often called moulages, of them. S/he begins by spraying the surface with a fixative; ordinary hair spray or shellac will do in a pinch, but a special fixative available from supply houses is preferable. Then a portable frame—metal or wood—is placed around the track. Using the bucket and stirring stick that is part of his/her equipment, and following package directions on the bag of plaster, the officer mixes the plaster with water obtained at the scene. (Someone who habitually goes places where water is not readily available should carry several gallons of water in the trunk of his/her car.) Very carefully, pouring onto the stirring stick held just above the print in order to break the flow and diffuse the plaster mixture and keep it from damaging the print, the officer pours the plaster into the frame. The plaster is reinforced with twigs, straw, and so forth from the scene; an officer who customarily goes places where s/he cannot expect to find twigs and straw should carry Popsicle sticks, available in bulk in craft stores under the name of "craft sticks," as a substitute. It is important to avoid using twigs and straw from a different location, as that might confuse scientists who are studying the shoes and tires and the casts.

  Waiting for the plaster to dry may take anywhere from ten minutes to two hours, depending on the quality of the plaster and the atmospheric conditions. When it is nearly dry, a twig or even a finger is used as a stylus to put the officer's initials, the da
te and the case number in the back of the plaster. When it is completely dry, the casting is carefully lifted and put into a cardboard box upside down to finish drying. The officer should not try to clean it; that is left for the lab to do. This procedure accomplishes two things at once: it provides a cast of the shoe or tire, and it provides an exact sample of the soil, with its associated leaves, twigs and debris, in which the print was made, for comparison to the soil adhering to the shoe or tire.

  Toolmarks

  An officer should never attempt to fit a suspect tool into a toolmark; doing so would damage the evidence. If at all possible, the item the toolmark is on should be collected and packaged for transmittal to the lab. The crime-scene kit should contain a small saw, so that officers can, if necessary, saw out a section of the door frame where the pry mark is located. (I once moved into an apartment and noticed immediately that a section of an interior door frame had been sawed out and neatly painted over and several circles of carpet had been taken out and replaced with carpet almost, but not quite, matching in color. That alerted me that a major crime of some sort had occurred in that apartment.)

  If removal of the area is absolutely impossible, dental casting material can be used to obtain an exact cast of the print. The officer must follow directions on the container, as there are many different types of dental casting material.