Steps to Solving a Crime

1. Secure the scene Escort all bystanders away from the scene. Do not disturb the scene. Put up crime scene tape. As a police officer you want to make sure that you are safe. Make sure that the scene is safe for to enter and clear the area. Once the scene is safe, you should escort all bystanders away and tape it off with crime scene tape ASAP. This is to prevent anyone unauthorized from coming into the crime scene. You should not disturb anything in the scene since the location of all the evidence is crucial in solving a crime.

2. Prevent Contamination Put on gloves, boot covers, and masks. Only police officers and FCSU comes into the crime scene. It is crucial that we protect the evidence from cross contamination. We don’t want to put our own fingerprints, footprints, DNA, or anything else onto the crime scene or on the evidence. You want to put a full hazmat suit, boot covers, masks, gloves, and safety glasses. To ensure further safety of the evidence, make sure that only authorized officers like CSIs enter the scene. Even police officers who are not assigned to the case cannot enter.

3. Gather and document evidence Take photos of everything! Gather evidence in evidence bags. Do not cross contaminate! One bag for one piece of evidence! There is a very strict order in which we document and gather the evidence. First, the forensics photographer comes and photographs everything without disturbing the scene. This is to make sure we know where everything was before we start touching things. Once everything has been photographed, CSI will walk around and gather only one piece of evidence in each evidence bag. If the evidence is wet, we need to make sure we place it in a paper bag to prevent molding. The bags are sealed with information about the case, who collected it and at what time it was collected. Then it is sent to the forensics lab.

4. Process the Evidence Evidence bags are marked by time, date, name of the officer who collected it, case number, and evidence number. Evidence is sent to the forensics lab securely. Every evidence bag has a lot of information on it such as date, time, name of the CSI who collected it, the case number, evidence number, location, etc… This information is used to catalog the evidence in the case file. Once the evidence arrives at the forensics lab, it is sent to appropriate lab rooms depending on what kind of evidence it is. For example, fingerprints will go to fingerprinting lab. Bullets will go to ballistics lab. DNA is sent to a lab in Edmonton since we only have one lab in Alberta that does DNA testing.

5. Gather Suspects Anyone can be a suspect. Police officers will interview suspects. Anyone can be a suspect. It can be someone who is related to the victim or was around the scene or someone who is completely random who just happened to commit the crime. We gather all the people who we think are connected to the crime and ask them questions. They are not arrested at this point and their cooperation is voluntary. The most common question we ask is what they were doing and where they were at the time of the crime. This gives the suspects an opportunity to give us something called an alibi. An alibi is a reason suspects give us as to why they couldn’t have possibly committed the crime. Once we have an alibi, we investigate and check to see if the alibi is true. Just because an alibi is true, it doesn’t necessarily mean they are not connected to the crime. Suspects may have an alibi. Alibis are investigated.

6. Link Evidence to Suspects Evidence will point to a suspect. Evidence doesn’t lie, however suspects can. Evidence helps police officers figure out who committed the crime. Evidence is what tells the story of what happened. Evidence can put a suspect at the crime scene during the time of the crime. It can help determine if a suspect is lying to the police or not. You can link evidence to suspects to figure out who was involved and who is innocent.

7. Conclusions Once all evidence has been analyzed and linked to suspect(s), police can lay a charge. The suspect who has been charged has to go to court. Once all evidence has been analyzed in the lab and linked to suspects, police can then lay a charge. These charges are supported by evidence and the police officers and CSIs involved will have to go to court to testify. The suspect who has been charged also needs to go to court.

8. Prove in Court In order to prove that the suspect is guilty, police officers must present the evidence. Lots of notes and pictures are presented to illustrate the scene. If the suspect is found guilty, the judge will give a sentence. In order to prove that the suspect is guilty (beyond a reasonable doubt), police officers and CSIs must present the evidence in front of the judge or jury. They must show that the evidence was not contaminated or altered in any way. If so, it would make the evidence inadmissible. In other words, it would be improper or unfair to present this in court. Usually there are lots of notes, reports, and pictures presented with as evidence. This is why it is important for police officers to take lots of detailed notes. If the suspect if found guilty, the judge will give a sentence demanding the accused pay a fine or serve jail time.

You have now learned the process of how to solve a crime!