A Day in the Life of a Crime Scene Investigator
Sarah Cohen
May 27, 2010
Filed under Features
Who are you? Who who?
No, I’m not a “The Who” fan, but I am a CSI fan. CSI, for those of you who don’t watch one of the most popular shows on television, stands for Crime Scene Investigation. The show and it’s two by-products, CSI: NY and CSI: Miami, follow the work of a team of investigators as they probe through messy crime scenes, often murders, to find the culprit.
If you were to just watch the T.V. show you would probably think that the crime scene business was a highly glamorous gig, but you would be wrong. Unlike the T.V. shows where the technology is mind-blowing and the lives of the detectives are more dramatic than the actual crime scene, the real CSI’s live a seemingly normal life.
To compare the real CSI to the T.V. version of CSI, I went to the Crime Lab in Aiken. Not sure what to expect, I was quite surprised at what I found. The Crime Lab was about as big as a walk-in closet. In fact my mentor for the day, Detective Royster, told me that the room was used as a dark-room before the police department went digital. On the counters was a bunch of black fingerprinting dust, but that was about it for that room. The room next to it held chemicals and a place to lift finger prints. There was no huge lab, no hi-tech testing, and no guys or girls in designer clothing.
My day at the Crime Lab also included a tour of the truck that Detective Royster takes out to a crime scene. The truck included the same things that were in the lab. Detective Royster said that “pretty much anything I can do in the lab I can do here.”
As the day went along, I watched as Detective Royster got tips on burglaries, which he said makes up the most of his cases, and talking to a victim of assault. He said that in our area he gets “about two homicides a year.” I actually was able to see crime scene photos of one of the latest solved homicide. I also got to hear some of the crazy things that he sees, including a dog getting baked in an oven by a burglar.
When I asked him about his work in relation the show’s work he said that he “hates the crime scene shows, they make it hard on us because we have to explain to jurors that what they see on T.V. isn’t real.” He said that unlike the shows the people in the crime lab are not the same people that go out to arrest the criminal.
One of the bigger differences that I found was that DNA and finger prints are not what the shows make them out to be. If you watch CSI you will see that the detectives get DNA and fingerprint results back in a matter of minutes. Detective Royster said that if he gets a DNA sample that has to be rushed he might get it back in “ two or three weeks, and that’s if it is rushed. If it’s not rushed it could take two or three years.”
When it comes to fingerprints it’s not much better. “It’s hard to get a good finger print, most of the time we just get smudges” he says. However, if they are lucky enough to get a good print they run it through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS. The CSIs use this system in their shows, but unlike the shows, when you run a print through AFIS you get 15 possible matches then you have to pull their ten-print fingerprint card to hand compare them.
While most things are completely different from the shows, there are some things that are similar. For instance the T.V. show CSIs use Luminal to pick up blood just like the real CSIs do. Also both use alternate light sources to pick up body fluids.
One of the most interesting things that occurred in my day was getting to test marijuana. When a police officer picks up weed they must have it tested so that they can present the scientific results in court. Detective Royster weighed the “green plant substance,” looked at it under a microscope for signs of THC, and put chemicals on it that turned it purple.
So to conclude, the T.V version of CSI is not really anything like the real CSI. The technology and the speed of things is greatly increased by the media. While there were many huge differences, the main and most important one was that the real CSIs solve actual crimes that are affecting actual people. I owe a great day to Detective Royster, Captain Scott, and the rest of the Aiken Crime Scene Lab.
what school do you go to in collage to get where csi got to go and investage sites and look for evadenice?
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