February, 2010 Vol. 34 No. 2
TO PRESERVE
AND
PROTECT
* DEAN SCOVELL
It sags a little closer to the ground. The containment of
a crime scene is a task that falls eventually on most cops—some with
considerable frequency—and it usually starts as a baptism by fire.
Unfortunately, considering its import, relatively little
crime scene preservation training has historically been given to officers. Yet
the success of many a criminal prosecution can be traced back to how the first
officers who responded handled the crime scene.
When it comes to recognizing what constitutes a
well-preserved crime scene, few are more in a position to pass judgment than
those who ultimately handle them: homicide investigators. Often, they show up long after you, the
uniformed officer, have arrived on scene and coordinated its containment. What makes for a good crime scene
containment? What are the challenges you may face? And what do homicide
investigators wish you knew?
Identifying What You Have
The crime scene can become a study in conflicting
agendas.
Effecting the Containment
Remember, what constitutes the true scope and nature of
your crime scene may expand beyond that which is readily apparent. Once you’ve
identified the parameters of your crime scene, you have to physically define
them. A cardinal rule is that it's easier to constrict a crime scene than it is
to expand one.
“You’re not going to screw one up by making it too big,”
says Lillienfeld. “Guys can be hesitant because of traffic, shy about making a
scene a little bit larger than they were anticipating. But almost without fail,
you then find physical evidence outside the scene’s perimeter.”
Greg Dagnan, assistant professor of criminal justice at
Missouri Southern State University, teaches multi-level containment. He says
the first level is the most basic: that of the crime scene itself. A second
level—a second barrier—serves as a buffer zone, allowing for an area where
command staff can park their vehicles and investigators can convene without
interference. The third level constitutes the outer perimeter, where officers
and vehicles can be deployed and road blocks effected. Coordinating your
resources and keeping track of their actions ranks high when it comes to
attention to detail. Keep a homicide scene checklist and do things by the
numbers. “Little things” such as the absence of a crime log have been
successfully exploited by defense lawyers to create doubt as to who has
accessed a crime scene and might have contaminated it. David Newman conducts a
variety of crime scene seminars for everyone from first responders to
prosecutors and runs the Website www.insidethetape.com. He routinely makes the
following recommendations to patrol officers: “Officers should carry some type
of marking devices for physical evidence. I’ve seen officers use empty Coke
cans, business cards, or evidence slips. I encourage them to carry survey flags
or things of that nature so that when they have to mark physical evidence they
can do so properly so that what they use to mark evidence isn’t confused with evidence
itself. “They should also carry with them some type of recording device besides
just their cell phone, ideally some type of recording device that can store
separate audio or digital files,” Newman says. “We’d also like them to have a
video camera so that if they arrive at a crime scene and they see something
that might be temporary in nature and go away before investigators can get
there at least they have a chance to document it. Also, by having an audio
recorder instead of just handwritten notes they’re able to be much more
detailed in the documentation of a scene.” once the crime scene is cleared of
witnesses, victims, suspects, and paramedics, no one should cross the yellow
tape and/or enter the crime scene without prior approval of homicide investigators.
This prohibition includes the handling patrol unit, assisting units,
supervisors, and local dignitaries.
Vernon Geberth is
the author of what has been referred to as the "Bible of
Homicide"—“Practical Homicide Investigation: Tactics, Procedures and
Forensic Techniques.” He is also adamant about the need for decisive
containments.
“I don’t care if
you’re a billionaire or a bagman,” Geberth says. “The same rules apply. It’s called
constitutional law. What I want from first responders is to act like
official representatives of the police department, lock the scene down, stop it
in time, and prevent contamination.”
Geberth cites
ineffectual police presence as a major complication to the Jon Benét Ramsey
investigation. “The bottom line is that they (the Boulder Police Department)
did not conduct themselves like official first responders,” Geberth states. “If
you or I were called to the location of an alleged kidnapping and there was a
ransom note in the house, what does that make the house? It makes the house a
crime scene.
That means that we
own the house. We would have conducted a search, and we would have found the
little girl’s body, and all that conditional and transient evidence that was
disturbed because the body had been moved multiple times after it was
discovered would have been in place, intact, and they would have had an
investigation.”
AGGRAVATION, FRUSTRATIONS, AND
UNDERMINERS
At face value, preserving a crime scene doesn’t appear to
be a difficult task: You put up some crime tape. And you keep people out. But
it can be a lot more complicated than that. The good news is that, generally
speaking, a surprising amount of respect is extended to that flimsy trail of
yellow evidence tape. But not everyone is so respectful of this implied force
field, and any number of elements and emotions can threaten the integrity of
your crime scene. Perhaps no greater off ender is to be found than the
looky-lou cop who ventures into a scene with no reason to be there. “I had an
officer-involved shooting where a casing was found outside that had been
carried out on the boots of a looky-lou,” explains Lillienfeld. “At the same
scene, I had three sheriff ’s department executives walk through a house. They
had no reason to be in the house. I could give you a good briefing and you’d
know exactly what went on inside the house.” Mindless acts by officers at a
crime scene can also frustrate investigators. “I remember a crime scene where
it was contained and I found saliva,” Lillienfeld explains. “I thought I had DNA
evidence. It turned out that one of the
officers went into the scene and spit on the street. You’ll also find cops
putting cigarette butts out on the street, and even using a victim’s phone
inside a scene.”
These are some of the reasons Lillienfeld feels some cops
might best serve a homicide investigation by staying away. At the very least he
believes in limiting the number of responders to a scene. “Throwing a bunch of
people at a scene is not necessarily the best way to handle it. You want the
right people at the scene, people working together, people who are totally
aware and understand the whole concept of the investigation so they know what
they’re looking for. The more people you have to coordinate, the greater the
probability that something is going to go wrong,” Lillienfeld says. Another
problem is the contamination of the scene by relatives and friends of the
victims. “We had a murder scene where a woman was killed inside a home,"
recalls Lillienfeld. "Her husband somehow got wind of it at work, and he
came tearing up in his car. Nothing was going to stop this poor guy from going
in and seeing his murdered wife.
I'm in a suit and tie, and I'm on the ground wrestling
with this guy, getting my butt kicked. We wound up hooking him up and booking
him. “It was really unfortunate. We had no intention whatsoever of charging
this poor guy. You have the emotions, and you have to recognize that is part of
the job and part of being mature,” Lillienfeld adds. “Sometimes it happens; it
isn't the greatest thing in the world for our image, but sometimes you have no
choice. The guy contacted us later to apologize for ruining our clothing. He
was just out of his mind with grief at the time and later came to his senses,
which I think happens more often than not."
FLEXIBILITY, ADAPTABILITY, AND COMMON
SENSE
If ever there is a situation that may call for
flexibility, it is a homicide scene. Sgt. Dave Johnson of the San Diego Police
Department’s homicide unit notes that blind anal retentive adherence can
unwittingly complicate the situation.
"if you're at the beach and the tide is coming up and you're facing
the decision of letting the ocean wash the evidence away or not, you may want
to take a picture of its original location then collect it as best you can,”
Johnson explains. “people get so afraid of contaminating evidence because it's
a crime scene that they allow it to override their common sense. What's the
option? Let it get washed away? You need to be able to prioritize. You may be
able to get witnesses first, or collect evidence—or flip-flop that."
Geberth describes
a volatile situation in which patrol officers must take action long before
homicide investigators arrive on scene. “You go into a social club where
there’s been a shooting,” he says. “You temporarily have everybody neutralized.
What are you going to do? leave the guns on the floor and see who catches them
first? No, you’re going to secure the weapons. Oh, we didn’t get a picture of
it. Well, too bad you didn’t get a picture of it. I have five or six combatants
temporarily neutralized; I’m not going to leave the evidence in place before
somebody grabs it, it disappears, gets lost or contaminated. So I picked it up
and I took it. That’s just common sense.”
According to Newman, such common sense can be in short
supply at a crime scene. “We had two scenarios, both involving officers having
to react to shooting scenes and inclement weather,” Newman says. “One was an
indoor homicide during a northeaster storm where there was also evidence
outside in the front driveway and yard. The officer observed a cartridge casing
outside and a mutilated spent bullet. Water was creeping up to the house at
such a rapid pace that he had to react instead of waiting for investigators to
get there. Using a digital camera, he took two mid-range photographs and two
close-up photographs of the evidence as they lay on the grass then recovered
them and placed them in his pocket, which is OK to do. Ultimately that evidence
that he’d documented and recovered was used to reconstruct that scene and link
the suspect to what took place. “The
other scenario involved narcotics investigators in the middle of a buy/bust in
a parking lot that went south and resulted in a shooting with three suspects
and three officers shot. A storm was approaching, and there were casings and
handguns scattered literally everywhere. so officers that first arrived on
scene were able to use spray paint cans to mark the locations on the pavement
where the cartridge casings were recovered and they used numbers that corresponded to the evidence envelopes that
the casings were placed in (#1, #2, #3, etc.). We were able to reconstruct the
scene the next day when the weather cleared up because of that.”
PROFESSIONALISM AT CRIME SCENES
How you conduct yourself at a crime scene is a collateral
concern. And as LASD homicide detective Paul Mondry notes, patrol officers can
unwittingly complicate an investigation.
“Conversations, loose tongues, things that are said can
all be a problem,” Mondry says. “I had a murder investigation where comments
made by the officers were overheard by people and led to speculation. it took
on its own life when the papers were reporting things that didn’t occur, citing
it almost like it was gospel. In reality, it was just people who couldn’t keep
their mouths shut.”
Things can get volatile on the front lines, and it helps
to have sufficient manpower and a game plan in place. “We're in the communication business,”
explains Lillienfeld. “Sometimes people are going to listen to you when you try
to explain to them why you just can't let them touch or even see their loved
one because of the transfer of evidence. You have to give them the big picture:
‘Our job isn't going to just end here, and your grief isn't going to just end
here. A week or a year from now, we're going to be in court and we're going to
have hell to pay if I let you go hug your loved one.’ “Sometimes patrol cops
have a hard time explaining that to people, even people who are calm and rational
and not going crazy. “Sometimes we don't take the time to do that.”
Geberth also
understands the emotions encountered at homicides. “There’s a lot of tension, a
lot of emotion, and a lot of anger. They scream, ‘I want to see my son! I want
to see my son!’ My answer was always to say, ‘Listen, I understand that you
want to see your son. But I think under the circumstances that you should
remember him the way that he was in life because right now this is not a good
thing to see.’ And that would work.” Clergy members are accustomed to dealing
with bereaved individuals, and can serve as a buffer. Consider having one on
hand.
TALK
TO THE DETECTIVES
You can do the best job containing the crime scene and
still see your efforts prove for naught. crime lab technicians have
contaminated evidence with their own DNA. Homicide investigators have ignored
pertinent evidence. Prosecutors have dropped the ball. All you can do is what’s expected of you—no
more, no less. How will you know you’ve
succeeded? Some homicide investigators are more forthcoming than others. Geberth made a habit of writing
commendations for uniform personnel who did a good job. But not every
investigator is so conscientious when it comes to dealing with the uniformed
street cop, which is why prior to leaving the scene, you may want to take the
initiative and ask them for suggestions for the future. Because while they
might not otherwise say a word to you, they may nonetheless make comments
behind your back. Besides, as any
investigator will tell you, while it’s fine to count on dumb luck and dumber
criminals, it’s better counting on smart cops.
This article by Dean Scoville was reprinted from the
February issue of Police Magazine Vol 34 No 2.
http://www.policemag.com/Channel/Patrol/Articles/2010/02/To-Preserve-and-Protect.aspx