Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice / Crime Scene Search Part Two, Reel 2

[Music] fingerprints but uh I stressed in the uh camera so that uh we're not too concerned with the size with the exception when you go to blow them up for court purposes why then they will be drawn as to say the ink impression will be the same size that of the latent print good which brings us to another fingerprint question for Prof Professor Roth how long how long do fingerprints last that's always a good question and it's always asked of course it's a yes I do it's a variable it's unpredictable and we're not particularly concerned with the duration of them uh we we cover them then the circumstances in many instances will prove or disprove the time that the uh is concerned with the duration of the fingerprint I think the motivation in the question here is that for example if a crime is not immediately discovered would evidence such as fingerprints Laten prints would they uh evaporate after a while or dissolve or dissipate I think what you have to CL is that this question is often asked with some particular value in mind trying to use the duration of time as part of your case as a technician you are certainly recovering the evidence this is your Prime concern now as to whether a print that developed just came up can be pronounced a recent print is beside the point not Material it's not Material at the time and if someone was to make a pronouncement he could be proven so pathetically wrong it could jeopardize the value of the case one other very interesting point in your um lecture was the fact that uh fingerprints could be taken from skin and I was just wondering what contrast medium was used in that particular case well recognize that a lot of fingerprints appear because there's a foreign matter that has been deposited on the surface and in many instances we are cognizant of the processing that takes place but in this particular case this was a powdered fingerprint and I'm not trying to over emphas the unusual I'm just trying to point out that we shouldn't exclude possibilities because we think they're a little bit fantastic well I think that the majority of police officers who are watching this program except those who have had probal training in that regard would be the least Place they'd be inclined to look for print well I would like to think that every police officer would have looked in the back of that drawer and the inside of the drawer but you know it is pretty frustrating to come upon a scene where a lot of people have been possibly a lot of activity a lot of possible touching and then to say where shall the technician is his judgment in many cases what we're arguing against is that the initial officer on the scene thinks there's something that can be touched because it's an unlikely place to find evidence so we're saying any place is likely any place is possible great uh for the panel how much of the various special for example Mage hair and fibers fingerprints ballistics should the investigator know now this is a rather broad question here and of course we have a a broad and talented panel um I don't think that you can set any limits on how much he should know we'll never set limits on how much someone should know positively the more the horizons are unlimited here it very much because the uh the techniques themselves are changing as in the fingerprint um identification and scanning now the scanning techniques there's always something new make a comment on that surely I'm a firm believer that unless you are a trained technician you should not attempt in any way to move a disrupt that piece of evidence I've seen this happen time and time again where a smattering of knowledge in a field that requires a lot of knowledge can be a very dangerous thing I prefer to leave it to the experts or the technicians to handle well I think uh in fan as to the question here Professor uh mentions how much should the investigator know an investigator could include technician or the first officer on the scene and many departments I imagine it's a while before an expert can arrive on the scene so if he knows a little something about the subject he is probably then aware of the dangers of moving or removing what might possibly be evidence well I think Captain Solon would bear us out on this uh how much knowledge he should have is the question and there's no limit to that how much he should apply that knowledge is where the area so therefore I think that what George has mentioned is very true that if the individual tries to go beyond his own capability or responsibility he becomes part of the problem he might good case I was thinking Jim of that case that you mentioned with the pistol in the pocket right there there's um all types of degrees to this of course and I believe firmly that a police officer who bues to excel in his profession should get as the advantage of as much knowledge as he can but uh to take the professor's warning he shouldn't go beyond that particular knowledge um the thing is that um if you recognize your limitations and you take action uh to freeze the scene to preserve that scene for the expert or to make sure that all the evidence that is present at that particular scene is not Disturbed I I think that in many instances policemen overreact at the scene of a crime particularly a sensational crime by rushing there and that if somebody doesn't take control and exclude everybody including well-meaning policemen that the scene well might not be intact when the expert gets there to do whatever his specialty is very good point someone has EP on the panel here Professor J talking about the pistol case we had the same question I think what do you think L well I don't know I I I firmly believe that uh so that it isn't anything that uh we uh there's any mystery about it it should be left there uh all all evidence should be left there at the scene and especially on a major case on on a minor case perhaps police officer being present uh might uh want to uh uh look over the evidence but I I I firmly believe that any major case as Captain Sullivan pointed out I think it's most important to point out uh to keep keep away the uh the flock of uh of well-meaning people whether they be uh police officers or or even uh passive buys that might come into the uh picture they add on to they add as we said they destroy evidence they add additional uh things that aren't supposed to be there I definitely would uh let the scene be just as it is for the technician so that he knows uh where he stands when he arrives I sort of Imagine though the post office would frown on a load of gun being sent to the mail if you was sending it down to the bureau saying at Washington no well as a matter of fact uh I had occasion not too long ago to send quite a few weapons down to a laboratory in the South and we were not allowed to send it through the mail I had to send it through Railway Express after it was properly box the male would not take it Jim I would like to draw the distinction between What's Done Right at the crime scene and then the fact that time is always our enemy but there's so much that can be done uh with consultation with good sense with the best knoow of everyone available instead of thinking we must do everything now even though it's wrong as far as that gun goes we' discussed the preservation of the the position of the shells the actually making sure that when it is unloaded you know what condition you changed I think the person's concern Professor Roth is not the gun going but the gun going off right all right but the gun does not go off itself and if it's left alone until you are sure what you're doing it's only in the handling where incidents have happened that have been regrettable I think while it is there we're in good shape as long as that scene is preserved undisturbed CH I I just happened to think a good point as Bob was talking on this revolver uh I've seen it happen where another officer come by and pick up the weapon and open it now what has happened here you have had the two shots fired and then he'll get two shells empty shells in there and probably two live ones and he closes the revolver and uh who's to say later on what the position of that open uh CH becomes very important as to the position of that so that's why I said uh earlier that uh leave leave it alone and let someone that's qualified uh to handle it uh especially a murder weapon why uh so much can be gained from uh just the mere presence of it how it how it was located and uh exactly where it was of course this will all show up in the photographs and if anything has been moved why this is a cardinal sin M well that question you raised about the suicide with the knife on the Shelf I think the New Yorker would call that the needest trick of the week incidentally we uh are fortunate to have in our audience again Captain Hogan from the Boston Police Department who's been an old friend of the program and a former panelist and I understand that some of his uh colleagues are over in station 4 glue to the set 61 of them good so if they can get to a phone now they'll have the honor of asking you a question they've been trying to trip you up for years bill they can't do it a question uh is ultraviolet light and infrared light useful on the crime scene and what can it show who's going to take well let's not hesitate uh ultraviolet light uh is a portable uh piece of apparatus that can be used it can show up fluoresence it can be a field check yes it can do a lot of things at the crime scene the black light the same way can be used for a field check but stress again that it is a field check to try and eliminate things that can be processed in other directions and not let's figure that we're doing all the work at the crime scene back at the laboratory you can do so much more to examine these things at leally and correctly so while it is possible yes let's not again overemphasize some of these field techniques incidentally when Steve told me we're going to have an interesting cast for this program I didn't realize that he was talking about the one that you going to bring oh the the the mo now we have a question uh from our television audience can the panel give us some guidelines about conducting a an exterior crime scene search over a large area definely here we're back to that Professor ladw well uh let's go back to actual experience a case where a body is found uh in this case a female body evidently throttled to death and in the field this occurred in a foreign country the officers at the scene did an excellent job when a call was received that a body was out in a certain area the nearest building was several hundred yards away the field itself was screwn with rubbish and old doors that had been a bombed out section and the body was almost in the exact center with an area around it devoid of anything except this rubbish for several hundreds of yards and there had to be an entrance in there and there had to be an exit these officers realized this after all the body just wasn't thrown there and they immediately placed a man on each side of this Square fortunately put signs up in the particular language that no one no unauthorized person hastily scribbled it was to enter and stay there they did not attempt to go upon the scene whatsoever when the investigators did come there and the medical examiner no one was allowed in there who did not produce credentials or had Authority or a reason for being there and what amazed me most at all was after the initial investigation had been completed and it took some number of hours the medical examiner in this particular case and I have pictures of this actually went ahead and made an autopsy on the bottom on the on the body on top of a door that was not far from the scene and I have some pictures of this and it's a very unusual thing but getting back to security when you have great distances when is a possibility or traces of a path leading in to where the body is this should be very carefully preserved in all respects if it is raining on the outside of snowing try and cover up the body on the immediate vicinity if you can to protect it from the elements but generally speaking you need or will not have that great an area to protect immediately if you're looking however for a weapon later on you may require the services of any number scores of people in a very systematic search but before that you will have carefully covered the immediate area where the body was found have anything add or not L uh well I don't think that was the answer that they're looking for they're asking about the actual conducting of the search itself and uh it depends on the number of men you have to work with but uh any given area of search uh if you can get enough men together say maybe uh 10 it' be a good good goodly number and extend extend them so at arm length and have them take and grided make a sweep first you take and make a sweep forward and then in other words horizontally and then vertically and then you've got that whole area uh completely covered we've done this we've uh done this many times not only the actual uh crime scene itself but we've run this at the police academy where we have the students uh uh make an outside search and uh and this way we plant say maybe 15 or 20 objects and uh you be surprised Easter EG H yeah You' be surprised the first time around why they come up with a handful Second Time Around they'll come up with a few more and when they're all through much of the surprise you pull out another half dozen or so why uh it's surprising that unless it's conducted in that way systematic grid search both horizontally and vertically with arm extended so that each area is is particularly covered or then you'll get a good search you're sort of squaring the circles in the inside you're talking about clockwise and counterclockwise incidentally a question was raised before does it make any difference which way you start clockwise or counterclockwise I don't think it makes any particular difference for instance I'm right-handed I would normally start to the right suppose you're left-handed you would normally start to the left as long as you covered both ways coris has anything to do with that most people don't realize in the northern hemisphere the water goes down the drain clockwise in the southern hemisphere it goes down counterclockwise whether that uh would have any relation to the search well Jim before this goes down the drain why are we always talking about only one search many cases when you've made one search and you have found something you are more knowledgeable as to what you might be looking for so while we make one systematic search and hope it's done right let's realize that this is undisturbed we have more passes we're not trying to beat the clock as far as crime Solutions go well you brought that out number of times professor and I think it's very interesting to reiterate that time is not necessarily it's your enemy yes and the respect that Clues can be dist Disturbed or destroyed but it's not your enemy when it comes to a search for them I think it's been our enemy in the past because we're we seem to be stressing working against pressure and there are two levels of operation and police work there is what must be done immediately and then given the time and the back uh backing up and the Manpower and some of these other things let's assume that we then make time with work farest I can um add a little bit to that and that is that if you make a search make it thorough regardless of the time simply because this may be the last time that you will be able to get on these premises without a search warrant and that should you go back at a future date and look for evidence without the protection afforded You by a warrant and looking for Vital uh evidence and vital pieces of information and violate the provisions and the protection guaranteed under the fourth amendment that a vital part of your case may may be lost and this this happened to us in Worcester and in the effect of a shotgun shooting where uh one particular shotgun shell was missing and it wasn't discovered that it was missing until sometime later in the investigation at which time the officers went back and under the assumption they were still working under the previous Arrangement and that they had not totally vacated the premises as a result of completing the search they picked up the expended shell the expended cartridge and the admissibility of this particular thing was argued very strenuously in court there was motions to suppress on it and I believe they successfully suppressed them so to go along with Professor R's thinking that we must be most thorough when we're on the premises that first time and uh to identify and collect and preserve every piece of evidence that we intend to use in evidence at a later date course that's a very interesting legal point that you bring up the need for a warrant where you have a say a capital crime committed and the fact that you have to go to court to get a warrant to search those premises is a very interesting legal Point usually you're there at the request of somebody who's in legal control of the premises at that time uh when you're in the when you're in your initial stages of your investigation and who may have a vested interest in the U you know know apprehension of the but at a latest later date or a later time when U everything is calmed down to a degree and there are AES to grind so to speak you may not be welcomed back the second time and you might have to go back by virtue a warrant to secure evidence that you could have gotten the first time around but then wouldn't the warrant have to be specific and have to deal with particularity as far as the object and its location right which gives you another headache it does it certainly does uh is the trend towards specialization that uh Professor swidler talked about in the last two programs going to go on and if so will it include the patrolman more and more sort of leads into that other question we had yes as we discussed that in the last program we had the Trent to specialization as far as the patrolman concerned is only limited by the individual patrolman I don't know a police department no matter how small well let's say at least four or five men the minimum uh whose Chief would not be very definitely interested if any of his men profess a deep interest in the field of Photography or fingerprints or ballistics and who would not go out of his way without of course having to obstruct the normal workload to help that man to get that specialization as I mentioned before not every police officer wants to go to college not every police officer wants to get a degree many of them want to specialize and should specialize there just aren't enough in the field of specialization in my opinion throughout our country I think it's a wonderful opportunity today with the government of course making funds available for him to get this specialization from accredited schools and universities so I say there is no limit except that which the individual patrolman places upon himself time has never been better there's a question that comes in here that's a little uh aside from the issue are dogs useful in searching a crime scene for example for Narcotics I I can remember now you know it's interesting this question comes in because uh last weekend I was down in Miami and I watched a demonstration with K9 dogs where one was trained for this purpose and he could sniff it other dogs couldn't yeah Jim we had a a k9 core on the cape uh and uh we had a man trained to handle this dog and uh as far was uh taken we had made a search of a hotel uh which was pretty pretty large one at that and had some 40 50 rooms that dog took that Handler through those rooms and it seemed to me in about 10 minutes flat and he had that place searched very thoroughly that person had been in there he' to smell them out so that as far as search for an individual is concerned uh they're good excellent excellent but far as narcotics this is something I passed to someone else well in the area of Narcotics I think what would to be proven is the same thing that has to be proven to qualify a police officer or some technician as an expert that it would have to be proven to the satisfaction of the Court can you see the dog taking the stand well it would have to be proven yeah actually in in field tests to the to the satisfaction of somebody in the Judiciary that this dog could in fact do what he was advertised to do although I think in this particular instance he would probably be used more than anything else to lead the individual to the stash or to the pad whatever it happened to be rather than for his future use in court he would be the on point so to speak well it you become a question then of your U of your search of your search and seizure you're using him as an instrument of a search CU if the defense attorney asked the question how did you know when he said the dog told me well he'd be in trouble I'm sure it is a fine technical point there yeah question what is the best way of packaging and transporting narcotics I know that there is some Danger from handling powerful chemicals like LSD should any special precautions be taken would anyone on the panel care to uh it all depends on what the uh narcotic particular narcotic well he refers here for example like LSD LSD no problem in transporting that usually the uh the officer who uh has obtain the narcotic will usually take it in person so that uh he keep the chain of continuity there but it can be transmitted by by mail no problem far as the packaging is concerned the same thing would apply that appli to your mullage he would have to seal it and identify it initial it I would definitely say that it should go registered mail however and make sure that uh that uh that's covered we'd have an awful Happy Mailman otherwise can I ask about uh this one uh talking about mail these questions come in a very strange sequence here can I ask the post office to check on the source or destination of mail from a specific address or do I need a court order I think what they're referring to hear a mail covers and uh my recollection you gentleman can concur or not uh my recollection has been that this has been a request an inter agency request to the post office department and it's discretionary with them as to whether or not they will execute it I know there have been recent Congressional hearings on this subject relating to the right to privacy that have U somewhat dampen the order of some agencies to request it I imagine it would have to be a uh you know serious enough situation to uh make that request to the post office perhaps is just as well a comment that it wasn't abused or overused it was always for a very limited time that it was nobody knew you and the Postal Inspector and uh since it it wasn't really the fishing Expedition that so many have made it out to be you were looking for something specific that was part of your case in many instances it was a valuable adjunct to investigation and not mishandled it all in the minute or so that we have left I wonder if uh maybe uh Mr catalo or Captain Sullivan would comment on the uh use of the U National Crime information center in Washington in checking on stolen property question has come in on that want I get the G well it's a u it's a wonderful thing if you've got the ability of you got the wherewithal to communicate with it I know that the city of Boston has and that Wester is currently uh in the process now of attaining of obtaining a um a teletype writer to feed into the Boston system with which we can communicate and it's a wonderful Aid to law enforcement uh the question comes on cost of the original equipment I might add uh to what Captain Sullivan said I think that in short time you're going to see where the uh this is going going to spread now Washington has its uh its lines out to the key cities of the United States with information that it's only as good as the information that's fed into it that's right so that in time you're going to see a great deal more on this I think that we can say in conclusion the fact that an officer on the crime scene will eventually submit this evidence to a laboratory for examination doesn't relieve him of the responsibility to uh become an expert in the uh recognition and collection of physical evidence and the program has demonstrated the need for closer cooperation between the field man and the lab man and equally important I think are the ways in which he reduces what he sees and what he collects to writing the subject of our next program will be report writing and I hope that you'll all be watching that as well thank you panel for coming here today and for engaging in this very interesting discussion a [Music] n [Music]