As quickly as he had begun talking about 9/11, he stopped. For several minutes he just stared at the jumbo TV, drinking his bottomless glass of beer. We each picked at the remnants of our spicy food, holding back garlic and rice burps. After talking for hours about crime, New York, 9/11, and nothing in particular, the time had come for us to leave our Larry Love. He drove us back to our car, his radio blaring the sounds of a new Sebastian Bach song. He was en route soon to China, at the request of Mr. Bach, to do what he does best: guard bodies. With a final hug, a gentle pickup off the ground, and a few tears, we said our good-bye to Larry Love so we could catch a few winks back at our hotel before our long drive home the next morning.
The next morning, we watched the
Today
show down in the common area of the hotel with the other vacationers, businessmen, and the like. The scrolling marquee whizzed by the bottom of the television screen with weather reports, box scores, and an up-to-the-minute look at the Dow Jones. Sandwiched somewhere between sports and weather was the mention of a three-month-old baby who had been murdered by her father in the Bronx the day before. He had confessed to the killing and had been arrested. “Who the fuck would do that to a kid?” someone in the room said. Other than the NYPD and the medical examiner’s office, we were among the few people on the planet who knew the intimate details of what had transpired.
The previous night, Larry’s partner had been sent to work the scene at the parents’ house, looking for any evidence that might show foul play. There was nothing tremendously out of place or suspicious—except for a perfectly rounded indentation in the wallboard, where the father had crushed his daughter’s head. “She wouldn’t stop crying,” he later told the police.
We had had the privilege of seeing what the ME saw, hearing what the detectives knew, and knowing what the CSIs had found. But in a city like New York, a city ranging anywhere from eight million to eighteen million residents, it’s virtually impossible for any one person on the criminal justice continuum to get that viewpoint. The father had confessed to the murder, which more than likely meant there would be no jury trial, so it’s possible that none of the players would ever know the whole story. With so much crime every day, they’d all be back to their respective autopsy tables, trench coats, and fingerprint brushes. In a sense, crime scene investigation in New York is like working in a huge Corvette factory, where the guy who makes the starters never sees the completed car—he just keeps churning out starter after starter after starter. Having that myopic view is sometimes problematic because it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. The never-ending job of working death takes its toll, and the reality of the job can sometimes get lost—and it’s all in the perspective that each keeps. The guy on the assembly line, when asked what he does, can either answer blandly that he makes starters or proudly, and accurately, say that he builds Corvettes. Larry, the ME, and the Keitels could answer that question, focusing on what their individual jobs are. But a better answer, and a better answer for every entity of the criminal justice system throughout the country, is to answer the question proudly—“I am a builder of Corvettes; I am a solver of crime.” And being a solver of crime is about as worthwhile a job as there is. So let it be done.
9
Back to the Future!
ANYTOWN, USA
S
hots fired, shots fired!” the caller screams to the 911 operator. The operator takes the information and immediately calls the Anytown Police Department, sending the first responding officers to the address of the house where the call came from. The officers rush to the scene with blue lights flashing and sirens blaring. As soon as they arrive, they draw their weapons from their holsters and approach the house carefully, methodically checking every door, every window, and every corner—making sure the perp is gone and the scene is safe. Within minutes, the officers see what appear to be bloody shoe prints on the sidewalk leading away from the house and blood pooling out from under the front door. The responding officers, believing that they probably have a murder scene on their hands, call their regional laboratory, requesting the assistance of the Crime Scene Response Team (CSRT).
Shortly thereafter, the CSRT arrives in its fully equipped crime scene truck, decked out with all of the latest and greatest forensic equipment. This truck also comes complete with satellite communications and UHF wireless transmission capabilities for constant and real-time communication with the laboratory. These communications are broadcast on the newly acquired 700 MHz frequency named the Wireless Forensic Telecommunications Network (WFTN), once used by the television broadcast industry. UHF information sent wirelessly at this frequency can easily penetrate walls and buildings and can be sent long distances—all things that traditional Wi-Fi cannot do. By the time the team arrives on the scene, the crime scene response commander has been alerted and has assigned a crime scene case manager to oversee the entire case from processing the crime scene to getting the case to the courtroom. The case manager, who stays back at the laboratory, is a seasoned veteran with years of practical casework experience. He takes his post behind a fifty-inch high-definition plasma screen television where he can see and hear what is happening at the crime scene in real time.
On arrival, the team members gather all of the information they can from the responding officers. Before they begin to process the scene, they all confer in the truck, with the case manager assigning duties via the WFTN. As they dress themselves in the newest anticontaminating PPE (personal protective equipment), a team member prepares headsets with microphones for everyone to wear while the scene is being processed. Thus, team members are always in constant communication among themselves and with the case manager at the lab.
At the house, the seven-person response team begins its assault on the crime scene. Five people process the scene, searching for, photographing, and collecting evidence. Another person is in charge of being the videographer, recording everything at the scene and transmitting the live video feed back to the plasma screen at the lab. The seventh member of the team remains in the command center within the crime scene truck, managing the multimedia communication system.
The photographer of the team begins taking digital pictures immediately. Through the use of a wireless SD memory card within the camera, the photographs are uploaded from the camera to a computer back at the laboratory. Of particular photographic interest at this scene are two pieces of evidence: a fingerprint that was just developed on the frame of the doorjamb and the bloody shoe prints on the sidewalk that seem to lead away from the scene. As the pictures of the fingerprint and shoe prints are taken, they are instantaneously transmitted to the lab, where the case manager receives them. The case manager downloads the photographs and adjusts them in Adobe Photo-shop, a digital imaging program, to bring out the best details in the photographs of the evidence. The manager then e-mails the photo of the fingerprint down to the latent prints section of the lab, where it is immediately uploaded into AFIS, the nationwide fingerprint database. The photo of the shoe print is submitted into the known shoe pattern database that contains tens of thousands of different patterns of footwear.
As the CSRT continues to process the crime scene, the DNA specialist of the group begins to swab the blood found outside the scene, collecting samples and placing some of what is collected into a newly created device called “DNA on a chip.” This device, not much bigger than a dime, can sort the DNA strands by size and determine a profile for the sample. Within ten minutes, the chip confirms that two different people shed blood at the scene—a Hispanic female, who is the victim, and an unknown male Caucasian “person of interest.” The findings are submitted back to the lab, where the case manager will take the information and begin his collaboration with investigators at the Anytown Police Department.
The other members of the team continue processing the inside of the house, combing the dwelling for anything that may be evidence. “What’s that?” comes through on everyone’s earpieces. The case manager, who’s been watching the team work the scene from his lab, has seen something on the screen and directs the videographer over to the broken window where a piece of fiber, possibly from the suspect, hangs in the shards of broken glass. The fiber is collected by the team.
The team continues to work the scene, communicating throughout with the case manager at the lab. They use laptop computers called
tablet PCs
that allow them to write their scene notes, draw their scene sketches, and enter evidence into a log, all by writing on the computer screen. This technology eliminates writing notes on paper and having to transcribe them back at the office. All of the evidence that is collected and packaged is labeled with a bar code and scanned into the system for laboratory submission. The case manager consults with the team on what pieces of evidence have the most probative case merit and ultimately decides to submit only those that are determined to be the most relevant to the lab. Because investigators can determine at the scene which pieces of evidence are most important to the case, the lab will not have to spend time processing items with less evidentiary value, thus eliminating the “everything but the kitchen sink” mentality that has traditionally overwhelmed laboratories.
Within eight hours the entire crime scene has been processed. While the team worked the scene, the lab scientists were already running tests on the evidence that was collected to help investigators with their search for the suspect in question. A positive match comes back in AFIS with the name of a male Caucasian, thus confirming the DNA-on-a-chip field sequencing. The shoe-pattern database also identifies the shoe print as coming from a New Balance tennis shoe. All of that information—name, race, even type of shoe—are critical in finding a suspect, and within hours that information has been given to the police department investigators. Before one full day has passed, the suspect is arrested, still wearing those same bloody New Balance shoes.
Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? Too much like a Hollywood sci-fi flick, involving the creation of a flux capacitor and a wild trip in a used, plutonium-powered DeLorean. But it could be the
crime scene of the future
. In this day and age, crime scene investigation is usually a very low-tech affair, lacking continuity between the crime scene and the crime lab. And worst of all, forensic science usually plays a very small role in the actual investigation. By the time the laboratory analyst receives the evidence, analyzes the pieces, and sends them back to the investigating department (which is a time frame of roughly six months), the investigators already have a suspect in mind and quite probably have already made an arrest. The prosecutor then uses the evidence that was analyzed to either corroborate or refute the testimony of the accused. For a long time, forensic science has been a prosecutorial tool, providing the evidentiary ammunition for the prosecutor to go to court. The crime scene we just described could be the future of forensic criminal investigations.
“I’ve always thought that forensic science should be an investigative tool,” forensic scientist Jeff Gurvis explains to us, on a cold and blustery day in Knoxville, Tennessee. Jeff has come to town to teach bloodstain pattern analysis at the academy. But this is only one of the many forensic hats that Jeff wears. Jeff is the lab director of a newly envisioned forensic laboratory. Though still in its early planning stages, this one-of-a-kind private, full-service laboratory could revolutionize forensic science. “That’s what it should be all about,” Jeff continued, “helping and aiding the investigation. Just think, if everything was in real time, everything is still hot, everybody is still very interested; the first forty-eight hours is the most crucial, right, so forensic science should help in that time frame.”
The first forty-eight hours
are
the most crucial part of criminal investigations; after forty-eight hours, the odds of solving a case are drastically reduced, nearly cut in half. With many lab tests taking months to complete, the investigative value of the forensic evidence collected at the scene is diminished and, in many cases, nonexistent. According to Jeff, “Forensic science provides little to no impact during the first forty-eight hours because of backlogs, how things are organized, et cetera.”
Because of his unique background, Jeff confidently states that he has been in more forensic laboratories than anyone in the United States. Jeff began his career by getting a master’s degree in forensic science from Michigan State University, followed by an MBA from DePaul University. His career has been eclectic. He has been part of a state crime lab, worked many forensic cases, and taught in countless places, such as the FBI National Academy and the NFA. He currently works for the Porter Lee Corporation installing laboratory software known as The Beast in labs across America. The Beast is an integrated evidence-tracking system for police departments and crime laboratories. In simple terms, it is an electronic way to track and submit forensic evidence collected at the scene. These unique educational and practical forensic backgrounds, not to mention his age (he’s only thirty-six), have made Jeff one of the young guns in the forensic community. This background and open-mindedness has led him to view things differently from many of his older counterparts.
“A lot of the law enforcement community scoff at the show
CSI
and discount it completely,” Jeff goes on to say. “I’ve always thought that some of the tools and some of the ways things are done on
CSI
should be something to strive for—they are definitely possible, and the technology, for the most part, exists.”
Indeed, all of the technology used in our “crime scene of the future” does exist today. The wireless SD card can be purchased at Wal-Mart. The real-time, high-definition streaming video already occurs all over the Internet, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A footwear database, a concept that is being heavily championed in England, exists as well. One database in particular, called Solemate, was created by the U.K. laboratory Foster & Freeman and can currently be found in a few laboratories in the United States. The wireless UHF band will become available in 2009 as broadcast television goes completely digital. Even the DNA on a chip is a real device that is currently being perfected in laboratories such as the Y-12 National Laboratory and Harvard—though, admittedly, it is still in the early testing phase. In many ways, the technology used in our futuristic crime scene is reminiscent of an episode right out of television. Hollywood often uses technologies that seem incredible or, at the very least, too good to be true—yet for all of the complaints directed at these types of shows, maybe, on some level, they’ve got some things right. One way that television may have improved on reality, much to our chagrin, is
CSI
’s Gil Grissom. He’s the closest thing on television or otherwise akin to a forensic case manager—someone who follows the case from beginning to end and leads the team in all aspects of the investigation—and that’s something desperately missing from today’s approach to crime scene investigation.