Literal/Interpretive:I Isamar did my 30 hours at the Forensic science Academy and at the Forensic's at Pomona Police Department. After learning the techniques to properly document a crime scene we were put into many simulations. All the simulations are time consuming. We would arrive at the simulated scene in the morning. And start the whole process. As a group we were given a crime scene and we initially have to do a walk through. The first walk through is just an overlook. We don't touch anything, we just look. The next walk through is going in different ways to see another evidence that we have missed. Once we did that walk through we would have a set path and have to stick to that. After that walk through we would have to do another walk through but this time to document the scene. We would draw where the evidence was and where the body lies.We had to measure everypiece of evidence. Let's take the body for example. We would find a point of origin that all the evidence pieces had in common and then we measured them. We would have to measure the right wrist, left, wrist,head, bellybutton, left leg, rightleg, all from the point of origin. Once the group got the documentation down pictures had to be taken. These pictures can be pretty tricky sometimes. The first set are an overview of the scene, Then we would put the placards on the evidence and take pictures of all the individual pieces of evidence and the projectiles, and the body. Once all the pictures were taken we had to dust and lift the evidence, so we would dust the weapons and go through every bullet casing and document the type it was. When that was done, we would collect all the evidence in separate bags. Then we would call the "coroner" and get updates from him. Once we were done with the scene the group would get together and discuss all the facts and come up with a possible time of death, and recreate the scene. The next day, we would have a simulated"court" and talk about everything that went on in the scene and give the facts and tell everyone about the investigation. We would repeat these simulations many times.
Another thing we did, was that we were given pictures of a crime scene and we would have to figure out what hapened just from the evidence that we saw. We would use a magnifying glass to look at things on the desk on the floor, their decomposition status and then present out to the class. We had a projectile lab, Where the teacher showed us how to use a wooden stick and the hole that was made from the gun and use a formula with a prortactor to find the angles and that would give us the position of the shooter. At the Pomona Police Department I have been looking at many pictures of crimes that they have had and they have told me many things about what went on, I got to do some fingerprint lifting, and I saw how the Investigators match fingerprints to suspects and how they look for points that match. I have attended a trial and saw how the whole thing plays out....it is not a fun as they show in the movies.
Applied/Interpretive:Everything that we learned in class about projectiles and bullet casing and dusting we would go outside and apply all our knowledge into the simulation. We would need to tell the difference between real potential evidence and real evidence that would help the investigation. Once we were in the field we did everything on our own to solve the crime. When we would not do simulations we were shown actual crime scene photos and we would take our knowledge and talk about the picture and give facts about it. Like, he was a male Latino. He has skin slippage and marbling going on. I am a bit more thourough when it come to looking at some things, I have become a bit more patient, because some crime scenes may take a very long time due to the evidence. Some may have two pieces of evidence , while others may have 103. Some documenting may take half an hour and some may take 14 hours. This has helped me answer my E.Q. because it is important not to rush through a scene, you only get one opportunity to document everything, or else you cannot go back to it. It is better to have more evidence, than not have enough. We cannot rush because then we miss an important evidence piece and the whole investigation could have changed lanes due to that piece that we missed, because of our impatience.
