Scene of the Crime (5 page)

• Does follow-up investigation, which may take days, weeks, months or years.

• Prepares necessary search warrants and/or arrest warrants.

• Maintains case files.

• Writes follow-up reports as needed.

• Usually makes subsequent arrest.

• Coordinates with prosecuting attorney to be sure case is adequately presented.

• Testifies in court as needed. Crime-Scene Division —

• Goes to scene of crimes and accidents.

• Takes photographs as appropriate.

• Develops photographs or arranges for them to be developed at secure facility.

• Makes measurements as appropriate.

• Makes initial crime-scene sketch at location.

• Makes detailed crime-scene drawing at headquarters.

• Collects physical evidence.

• Maintains legal integrity of physical evidence by

1. Keeping evidence locker secure

2. Maintaining chain of custody

3. Keeping unauthorized people out.

• Prepares laboratory requests.

• Transports evidence to laboratory or arranges for its shipment certified mail, return receipt requested.

• Looks for fingerprints at scene and on evidence transported to headquarters.

• Maintains inked fingerprint and palm print files.

• Compares latent fingerprints to known prints of suspects.

• Searches unknown latent fingerprints through files, using all means available including computers.

• Prepares fingerprint charts.

• Testifies in court as needed. Emergency Medical Technician—

• Examines victim at the scene, if there is any possibility the victim is alive.

• Provides emergency medical care.

• Transports victim to hospital, if victim is alive.

• Stays on hand to transport victim to morgue, if victim is dead.

• Testifies in court as necessary. Coroner and/or Medical Examiner—

• Pronounces victim dead at scene.

• May make initial medical examination at scene.

• Arranges for and/or performs autopsy.

• Determines cause of death.

• Provides as much information as possible to investigating officers.

• Makes formal autopsy report.

• Testifies in court as necessary. Coroner's or Medical Examiner's Investigator—

• Investigates cause of death, coordinating efforts with those of other investigators.

• Makes any necessary follow-up investigations as to exact cause of death.

• Testifies in court as necessary. K-9 Unit-

• Dog may track apparent victim who has left scene.

• Dog may track perp who has left scene.

• Dog and trainer may help to control the scene.

• Dog may help to capture perp who is resisting arrest.

• Dog may sniff out drugs.

• Dog may sniff out explosives.

• Trainer testifies in court as necessary.

Secretary—

• Types and files reports dictated by officers.

• Types search warrants and arrest warrants, under direction of officers.

• Types and files written statements of witnesses, victims and perps, under direction of officers.

• Helps keep witnesses calm while statements are being taken.

• Deals with telephone and face-to-face inquiries from reporters, relatives and other interested persons.

• Testifies in court as necessary.

Crime-Laboratory Technician—

• May go to scene if crime is unusually serious.

• Receives evidence from crime-scene technician, maintaining proper chain of custody.

• Keeps evidence legally secure.

• Performs necessary chemical, radiological and/or microscopic examination of physical evidence.

• Makes detailed report to jurisdiction(s) involved with case.

• Testifies in court as necessary.

Records Division —

• Maintains mug shots and arrest records of all people arrested.

• Maintains copies of all initial and subsequent crime and accident reports, making them available to appropriate people including victims and their families, insurance companies, and officers from other jurisdictions.

• Makes out intake sheet on all arrestees.

• Fingerprints and photographs all arrestees.

• Microfilms old files so that the paper files can be placed in

long-range storage or discarded.

• Testifies in court as necessary.

• Keeps track of disposition of cases, so that records remain up to date.

District Attorney—

• Coordinates with investigating officers to be certain warrants are not taken before the case is adequately investigated.

• May provide additional investigators to work with police investigators to ensure that all legalities are dealt with appropriately.

• Prepares and presents case in court.

Be aware that not all jurisdictions have all of these positions, and that some of the names may differ from place to place. A person who investigates a crime may be called a detective or an investigator; that person may carry the rank of patrol officer first class or lieutenant, and the office that person works in may be called the Detective Division, the Detective Bureau or the Investigative Section. A person who goes to the crime scene for the purpose of taking photographs and measurements, sketching and fingerprinting may be called an identification officer, an identification technician or a scene-of-crimes officer.

As a writer, you have the responsibility of checking with the appropriate police department, district attorney's office, sheriffs department, or whatever to determine precisely what is done in the kind of department you are writing about.

Failing to look into these matters can result in your looking extremely stupid—in print.

Dr. Hans Gross, professor of criminology at the University of Prague, has the distinction of having written the very first book of criminology that was a major influence in the Western world. Originally titled
Handbuch fur Untersuchungsrichter als System der Krimi-nalistik (A Handbook on the Criminal Sciences for Examining Magistrates)
and published in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it went through countless translations and new editions; the 1934 English translation of the third edition, which I quote here, was a very late version. Although almost everything in it is now outdated and superseded, it is still well worth reading because it was the first solid attempt to systemize investigation and turn it into a science.

The situation Gross describes in the preceding passage has not changed in the slightest. Some of the unlikely places my friends and I have found evidence include a hole in the outside wall of a house on the escape route of a robber, a residential garbage can in the alley two blocks from where the crime occurred, the inside top of a lipstick tube (an Avon special, made for holding solid cologne as well as a lipstick), inside sugar and flour canisters, inside refrigerators and freezers, inside an ornamental clock, and inside curtain rods. Narcotics officers once searched a house for marijuana and hashish without success, but totally missed the six marijuana plants growing in small pots on the kitchen counter. (Dell Shannon—in real life, Elizabeth Linington—put that one in a book, after I told her about it.)

Secret documents, jewels and drugs have been smuggled inside baby's diapers, inside corpses being returned home for burial, in balloons swallowed or thrust up the courier's anus, inside linings or hems of clothing, in cameras and film containers, inside ballpoint pens or fountain pens. Disassembled weapons have been smuggled disguised as camera components; assembled and disassembled weapons have been shipped in bags of flour, meal or powdered milk, in barrels of missionary clothing, in crates of tools and hardware. In fiction, hide contraband anywhere you like. You can be sure some real criminal has thought of it before you.

Collecting evidence deserves a special chapter—or more—of its own. In real life, it is critical that evidence be collected and treated correctly, if it is to tell what it can tell. In fiction, you have to know what you can and can't do with evidence—but bear in mind that this is something that changes. Keep track of court decisions and technical developments to keep your writing current.

A person searching a crime scene is less likely than someone searching a suspect's house to find evidence deliberately hidden, unless the scene also involved narcotics, smuggling, the concealment of stolen property, or something like that. Also, a person searching a crime scene doesn't need a search warrant if someone who has control over the area is willing to sign a consent-to-search form.

If no one is willing, or legally able, to sign a consent-to-search form, then a search warrant is essential.

Searching With a Warrant

For clarity, let's assume again that you are your fictional investigator. Here is how you get and use a search warrant:

1. You must be a law-enforcement officer. No search warrant can be issued to anyone who is not a law-enforcement officer.

2. You must prepare an affidavit, in duplicate, describing the area

to be searched, the items you intend to search for, and why you expect to find those items in that location
(probable cause).
Prepare a search warrant, in triplicate. Take the affidavits and warrants to a judge and swear to the affidavits. At that time, if the judge thinks your cause is probable enough, the judge signs the search warrants. The judge keeps one copy of the affidavit; you keep the other, along with all three copies of the search warrant.

3. You and however many more people you need go to the scene. Unless the scene is already under the control of the police, as it usually is when you're searching the scene of a crime, or unless you have a no-knock warrant—which is issued only if there is strong reason to suspect evidence will be destroyed in the time it takes for someone to open the door, or strong reason to fear for the safety of the officers serving the warrant—you knock on the door, announce yourselves as police officers, and wait for somebody to come to the door.

4. Usually one officer (or more, if necessary) will corral all people on the scene and keep them confined to one area. It is courteous and good public relations, though not a legal requirement, to avoid frightening children or other innocent people unnecessarily.

5. Search for the items on the list. Make a list on the warrant itself—in triplicate, because that's how many copies of the warrants you have—of everything seized whether or not it was on the original list of items sought for.

6. You are not responsible for restoring the premises to their presearch condition. However, you should avoid unnecessary damage and take all reasonable precautions for safeguarding property that belongs on the scene.

7. Leave one copy of the warrant, complete with detailed list of items seized, with the people in control of the place you searched. If nobody is there, leave a copy of the warrant displayed in a prominent place. Keep one warrant for your files, and return one to the court that issued the warrant.

Be aware that when officers are searching with a warrant (and remember that your private eye or your brilliant amateur cannot get a search warrant), the warrant must describe the places they may look and the items they may look for. Among other things, this means that unless the warrant mentions "the house and all outbuildings" instead of just "the house" nobody may search the garage or the lawn mower shed. Unless the warrant also mentions vehicles, officers may search the garage but not the car parked in the garage. If the smallest item mentioned on the search warrant is a refrigerator, no one may search the junk drawer in the kitchen—and if someone does search the junk drawer in the kitchen and find a pistol, that's tough. It is tainted evidence, not admissible in court, even if it is the weapon that was used to kill that officer's closest friend. However, an officer looking for a pistol who finds a stolen refrigerator may use that evidence, because there is no place the refrigerator would have fit that it would not have been reasonable to look for the pistol.