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Crime Scene Investigation_Week 3 Discussion 1

Crime Scene Investigation_Week 3 Discussion 1

Q 1. What are the issues that affect evidence collection? 2. You respond to a late night crime scene. It is an outdoor shooting in a vehicle and of course, it is raining. The reconstruction indicates that the shooter most likely leaned against the car to shoot inside. You think that there will be prints on the outside by the passenger door. Do you process the wet vehicle at the scene or tow the vehicle to the lab to dry out in order to get a better print? 3. You respond to another crime scene, this time it is an apartment burglary. The residents were gone for the week and upon returning they found their door broken and items missing. While processing you find a fresh block of cheese on the counter with a bite mark. What do you do? Is the cheese evidence? 4. While processing a stabbing you find limited evidence. However, your partner finds what they think is a patent fingerprint in blood. What do you do with the print? It is on a surface that can't be removed and taken as a whole to the lab.

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Usually, there are numerous issues that can affect the process of evidence collection which includes crime scene contamination, curiosity from spectators, tampering with the evidence, and ease of access and loss of evidence. A crime scene technician arrives at the scene after some time but by then some of the tampering is done. As a crime scene technician, it is never easy to collect evidence from wet surfaces as it involves a lot of problems. Still, there are some techniques that are used by crime scene technicians to gather the required evidence. The scene that has been provided in the prompt clearly suggests that the car where the shooting had taken place earlier was wet by then and as a result, most people will think that the evidence had been washed away but that is not the reality. I, being the technician, need to lift the prints at the crime scene only before thinking about shifting the vehicle to a dry place.