Behind the Yellow Tape: On the Road With Some of America's Hardest Working Crime Scene Investigators (30 page)

“What’s lacking in forensic science is that holistic view of crime scene work,” Jeff began, just before we arrived at a local restaurant down on the Tennessee River. “The more experience you bring to the scene, whether they are physically there or remotely there, the more knowledge you have at your disposal and, thus, the more effective you will be.

“Currently, the practice of forensic science from crime scene to crime lab is a very disjointed affair. It is chopped into many disparate pieces that do not readily communicate with one another unless they have to,” Jeff continued. The reality of crime scene investigation is not one of a technologically advanced unit, using all of what science has to offer, being managed holistically by a case manager with years of experience, following the case all the way from crime scene to crime lab to courtroom. Each participant on the forensic continuum is a virtual island. More often than not, the patrol officer must process a crime scene by himself as part of his other job duties, with low-tech or “no-tech” equipment—perhaps a fingerprint kit he’s rarely, if ever, used—and then submit what he collects to a very high-tech laboratory. Here, the lab scientists can only use their vast scientific instruments based solely on what they have been sent, not ever fully understanding the nuances of the scene or even readily communicating with the officer who submitted it. The forensic disciplines within the lab won’t talk to one another except to discuss what evidence needs to be analyzed by someone else. Labs themselves have become nothing more than assembly lines, taking evidence in and processing evidence out—though in most instances, the slow speed at which this assembly line is conducted would cause Henry Ford to turn over in his grave.

“And I know [from having done it myself] how long analysis of evidence should take,” Jeff tells us.

“Okay, Jeff,” we began our inquisition in between salads and biscuits, “how long would it take to analyze a sample of DNA if nothing else was going on?”

Jeff thought for a second and said, “Twenty-four hours, though I would allow thirty-six to double-check the results.”

Thirty-six hours! We have talked to people in labs ourselves, and when we gave the same utopian scenario that we had posed to Jeff, the best answer we received was two weeks. Even at two weeks, with thousands of rape kits waiting to be analyzed in laboratory coolers and new cases coming in daily, the laboratory backlog will never end. Which means that rapists can go on raping and killers can go on killing, at least for six months, or in some cases (as we sometimes saw during our travels) indefinitely. Lord only knows how many serial killers’ DNA sits unexamined in laboratories across America. An estimated fifty to a thousand serial killers are operating in the United States alone, and you can almost guarantee that at least one of them has his or her DNA just sitting on a shelf in a walk-in cooler somewhere, waiting to be analyzed.

And that’s just issues within the laboratory. The whole concept of crime scene investigation within a law enforcement agency has an inherent problem as well, which is that forensic science—or, more specifically, crime scene investigation—is not a career path per se. Traditionally, the CSI units’ commanding officer will be someone who has been transferred in to manage that particular unit, but has never set foot on a crime scene or, at the most, had one day of training in forensics. “Why is that?” we asked Jeff.

“The reason,” he stated, “is that most of your police chiefs, your superintendents, and other high-level figure heads, for them, forensic science is the lowest thing on the totem pole. Forensic science is not usually part of their knowledge base or their experience, and thus the farthest thing from their minds.”

Unfortunately, that situation has come to be known within the law enforcement circle as dealing with the F.O.G.
F.O.G.
, better known as the “fucking old guy,” is a phrase that we were introduced to on our travels around the country, and the F.O.G. almost always stands in the way of progress. Some personnel who reside within law enforcement agencies are notorious for lagging about twenty to twenty-five years behind the rest of the country when it comes to things such as management strategies and technological adaptation, preferring to invest in old-fashioned blue lights, sirens, and guns instead of new and advanced law enforcement tools. That’s particularly true with regard to anything involving forensic science. We heard horror stories of how some bureaucrats don’t understand the need for more fingerprint brushes or the necessity of moving away from Polaroid cameras, even though the film alone costs the department in excess of $100,000 per year and won’t even be available after early 2009—and perhaps much later. These decisions are not grounded in logic but based solely on fear—a fear of what they don’t understand and a fear of becoming obsolete. To them, it’s easier to maintain the status quo than to innovate or change, preferring to rely on the concept of “doing things the way they’ve always been done.”

The problem is further exacerbated by the fact that investigators within the crime scene unit, if they are promoted, have to be promoted outside the unit and into patrol or another division within the agency because there is no upward mobility within the CSI unit. We’ve seen students, good students, come through the academy and go back to their departments—only to get promoted right out of their units. The unit then loses that forensic knowledge base and that training investment and has to start all over in replacing what they promoted out over and over and over again. It’s a vicious cycle that is not easily remedied within the current structure of most law enforcement agencies. But that could all change soon.

Crime scene investigation has not always been a professional discipline. For years, the job of the CSI was performed by any cop who happened to be the one to collect the evidence. There was no training, no degree, no official title. This has begun to change within the past decade or so, with entire units dedicated to crime scene investigation, degree programs, and specialized training. Colleges and universities across the nation are adding forensic science and crime scene investigation as disciplines within their curriculum, and many are offering four-year degrees in those subjects. Some are even offering master’s-level degrees as well. When Jeff graduated from Michigan State, the university had just about the only program offering a degree, particularly a master’s degree, in forensic science. Now degree programs are springing up all over the country, with some of the best programs being offered at West Virginia University, Marshall University, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, George Washington University, and John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Soon we will be seeing these and other college graduates flooding the workforce with an advanced knowledge of forensic science and investigations that was once obtained only through years of experience on the job.

It is becoming more and more important for law enforcement agencies to recognize and understand the world in which we now live—or better still, the world in which we
will
live. The television show
CSI
has raised expectations, even if they are at times unreasonable, regarding what a crime scene unit and investigator should be able to perform. Many law enforcement agencies are also slowly starting to put a little more focus on crime scene investigation training, adding it to their police academies and sending officers to one-week and even ten-week training courses—something that was unthinkable less than ten years ago. It takes a big person to realize that things could be done better—and an even bigger person to seek out the help and training that the department needs.

The options for this help and training continue to grow. John Jay College of Criminal Justice is a leader in the professionalization of the CSI field. In February 2008 the college announced that it will be establishing a Crime Scene Academy—an international center for crime scene training for law enforcement professionals, undergraduate and graduate students, and the general public. This center, the first of its kind, is being made possible in part by a generous gift to John Jay by world-renowned author Patricia Cornwell.

The Crime Scene Academy at John Jay will be the first program of its kind to take a holistic approach to crime scene investigation. The program will add degree programs for college students, educate and assist law enforcement professionals, and even help elementary and middle school educators add forensic science to their curriculum. Other academies tend to focus only on professionals who are already in the field, but this one plans to educate everyone on the CSI continuum, including the general public, which is rare for law enforcement training. For centuries, law enforcement training and practices have traditionally been accessible only to those in the field, shielding the public from what goes on behind the yellow tape. This new academy intends to educate the public and hopefully arm juries with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions and eliminate the specter of the unknown when it comes to crime and crime scene investigation.

Texas State University at San Marcos is taking a different approach to enhancing the field of crime scene investigation. It is in the initial planning stages for a Forensic Research Facility very similar to the Body Farm at the University of Tennessee. This five-acre facility, part of the university’s forensic anthropology program, will train both forensic scientists and law enforcement personnel in areas such as time since death and identifying human remains. Because the climate of Texas is so vastly different from that of eastern Tennessee, the data that comes out of this new forensic research facility will add tremendously to that which has been coming out of the Body Farm for the past thirty years.

All of these developments in technology, research, and education will surely have a tremendous impact in the world of forensic science—leading to innovative people, practices, techniques, and ideas. Simultaneous advancements in forensics should bring about a plethora of changes within the law enforcement community, not the least of which will be in the lab.

“So Jeff, what is your concept that’s going to revolutionize the world of forensics?” we asked, somewhat jokingly; we’ve been needling Jeff for years about being the young guy with all the big ideas.

“Well, I had the idea back when I was in college,” Jeff responded, ignoring our teasing and launching into a story of how, back when he was working on his MBA and volunteering at the Northern Illinois Crime Laboratory, he began devising a plan to develop the United States’ first full-service private forensic laboratory—the National Forensic Support Laboratory. “This laboratory will serve, for the first time, the entire nation, in the core seven forensic disciplines—DNA, firearms, trace, drug chemistry, toxicology, latent fingerprints, and questioned documents,” Jeff stated proudly. “It will be available to law enforcement agencies to give them an alternative to going to their local crime laboratory; for court systems to have independent testing done; for defense attorneys to have retesting done; for private investigators, insurance companies, corporate security firms, and the general public, thus providing forensic services to whoever needs it.” And, almost as if he had already come up with a slogan for the lab, he finished his homily with the statement: “Because what we do inside the lab should not impact who’s using us.” In other words, whether it’s the prosecution or the defense paying for the test, the results will always be the same. True science doesn’t play favorites.

The idea, at its core, is not a novel one. Consider the whole DNA craze: At the moment DNA is all the rage, and because of its enormous popularity, private DNA laboratories have sprung up all across the country, offering their services to everyone from police departments trying to find the bad guy to suspicious, underwear-sniffing spouses trying to prove that a mate is being unfaithful. The reason—they want answers fast. “What about the other disciplines?” Jeff asks rhetorically. “Not every crime has DNA, and you have all of these other disciplines which may be of the same or even greater value than DNA. Thus you would have the same laboratory framework that exists within a state laboratory, but now take that out of the government’s hands and put it into an independent environment that runs like a business. Then turnaround times would be faster and the quality would be higher, meeting the customers’ needs. And we can help with the backlog too. State labs are already outsourcing their DNA to private DNA labs, but what about the other disciplines? We can help with those as well, catching the labs back up.” Theoretically, the backlog could eventually be eliminated altogether with regional private support laboratories.

Jeff’s idea has merits beyond simply creating an alternative lab to help with backlog, as well as independent analysis. For instance, not every case needs a specialist along the lines of an entomologist, or even a forensic anthropologist. We’ve been spoiled in Knoxville, Tennessee, with our access to the legendary Dr. Bill Bass and all his protégés still in the area. If a bone is found in the woods here, the police department can take it to an expert right away. But more often than not, a law enforcement agency does not have the luxury of a forensic anthropology expert at its disposal. We’ve heard off-the-record stories of skulls that were recovered when someone happened on them in the woods, but because of lack of access to an expert, they ended up fruitlessly passed around until they eventually became nothing more than a conversation piece within a department. Yet a private lab could provide that specialist at any moment. With just an overnight FedEx trip away, a forensic anthropologist could be analyzing the department’s evidence the very next day. And although most states may not have enough cases to warrant creating an entire forensic anthropology department within the state laboratory, there certainly would be plenty of cases to justify maintaining one nationally. Once you take Jeff’s laboratory model outside the government structure, the world becomes wide open, and a lab can make efficient use of several things, including economies of scale, because of this expansion. But the greatest advantage a laboratory outside the traditional government boundaries could bring is innovation—which brings us back to our crime scene of the future and the reality of real-time forensic investigation.