Crime Scene Investigation: What happens across Do Not Cross line?

Most of us like to watch movies & shows which have criminal investigations in it. Some popular TV shows like CID, Crime Patrol, Savdhaan India, also Hollywood shows like “CSI” are to count on. These shows’ depict that Investigator or Crime Scene Personnel search and gather evidences at the spot (scene of crime) with their Unique Investigation Power they analyse the jist of scene(from body fluid/ blood stains) by swabbing every perimeter of the scene. Several people think that we have adequate control over the process, do we? Rumours show, criminals are getting a jump on the good guys using the loop holes they pick up from these shows about forensics.

Do you think Bollywood or even Hollywood can get it correct? Do crime scene investigators go along with their DNA samples into the lab? Do they interrogate the suspected persons and catch the bad guys, or is their job all about collecting physical evidence?

In this blog, we'll explore what really goes on when a Crime Scene Investigator, "gets into action" ,gets a real-world view of crime scene investigation, how does an investigator uncover the physical evidence to help identify what happened and who was involved, by performing a well-organized examination of the crime scene.

Crime Scene Investigation (CSI) is that point where law, logic and science meet.

All the process of CSI is performed with great caution, to ensure that any collected fragile evidence is not destroyed in this process. “Investigating a crime scene” is very tricky, time consuming and sometimes tiresome process. It involves determined identification of the conditions at the location and the collection of any evidence that could perhaps highlight what happened to the point and who was responsible for it. There is neither typical crime scene, nor typical body of evidence; also, there isn’t any specific method of investigation.

At every specified crime scene, an Investigator has to collect dried out blood from the window sliding or may be from the gaps of the flooring – without allowing his arm to get into contact with any other surface, as it may contain suspects fingerprints on it; or use a hammer to break wall or ceiling which seems to be the origin point for an awful odour; or lifting of a hair strand from victims torso with the help of tweezers as to not disrupt the fabric movement containing white powder on it ( which might or might not be cocaine). Looks difficult, isn’t it? But this is what a Crime Scene Investigator really has to do.

But wait, when does an actual Crime Scene Investigator come into action?

The Crime Scene Investigation sets in motion once the CSI crew gets a call regarding the incident from police authority or maybe from a private detective about the scene. In general, all this system operates usually in this way:

● A CSI comes to the scene and the first thing she does is to safeguard the scene (Yes, exactly what you see in those TV shows, by putting yellow tape). After which, she carries out an initial walk-through to understand the overall crime scene, to find whether anything has been moved before her arrival to create a theoretical view based on her visual inspection, and make rough notes, before touching anything on the scene.

● Next step involves, exhaustively documenting the scene, taking her second walk-through, which includes taking photographs and also preparing some sketches of the scene. During this whole process, she thoroughly studies the documents relating to the scene and things she recognizes as evidence. Still nothing has been touched yet.

● Finally, it's time to taste; I mean to touch things at the scene, but with extreme care and precautions. The CSI, in a well-organised manner, makes her way through all potential evidence - bagging it, citing it and wrapping it, so it could remain “as it is” till it reaches the lab. Based on the duties of the CSI unit she works for, she should bifurcate the evidence before sending it. It might be possible that she may not examine any of the collected evidence in the lab.

● The CSI unit lab deeply examines all the evidences which are collected by CSI at the crime site. Post analyses once the lab reports are out, those reports are sent to the Investigation Officer or Lead Detective of the case.

Every CSI unit works in mainly two units, one unit performs field work (crime scene investigation) and the other unit works in the lab. Inspection of all the things performed at crime scene, is called as Crime Scene Investigation or Crime Scene Analysis. Rest of things like lab inspections & analysis performed, is called as forensic science. Not every Crime Scene Investigator is a forensic scientist. Some investigators work only on field, to collect the evidence on crime scenes and then forward those to the forensic labs. Now you get why a CSI must have a deep understanding of forensic science. This is to understand the potential value of numerous categories of evidence on the crime scene. But in most of the cases these jobs overlap.

So, Do all those crime shows get it correct? and Are they successful in illustrating the job of the crime scene investigator? I’ll say that, somewhere they all have missed the mark to completely depict the characters of CSI.